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Biblical eschatology. 



y/ BY 

ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., LL. D. 




PHILADELPHIA ' 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 

1420 Chestnut Street. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by the 

AMEEICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PREFACE. 



A few words of explanation may perhaps be wel- 
come to the reader of these pages. They will refer to 
the scope of the work, to the authority of Holy Scrip- 
ture, and to the interpretation of prophetic language. 

Biblical eschatology is understood by the writer to 
be an exposition of what the Bible teaches in respect 
to the end of this life and the conditions of human 
existence after death. It involves no defense or en- 
largement, no modification or refutation of that teach- 
ing : its only task is to ascertain and explain. If the 
treatment is more or less controversial, it is made so 
by the necessity of opposing certain interpretations of 
Scripture, and of defending others : only in two or 
three instances is there any turning aside to repel sci- 
entific or rational assaults upon the plain meaning of 
the Word. Many good reasons might be given for 
making this investigation Biblical ; but it is needless 
to mention more than one, the fact that apart from the 
Bible we have no trustworthy source of knowledge 



4 PREFACE. 

respecting the life to come. All other voices are faint, 
confused, uncertain. One whispers hope, another mur- 
murs despair. The only testimony worth having comes 
from the sacred writers. 

But alas, these are no longer " sacred " to all who 
bear the name of Christ. Their authority is called 
in question, and the distinctive quality of their inspi- 
ration denied. Men are taught to rely upon their 
Christian consciousness as firmly as upon the word of 
these writers. Objection is even made to the vener- 
able custom of calling their writings " sacred," be- 
cause this custom is supposed to rest upon too high a 
view of their authority, and to foster that view in the 
hearts of the people. With this trend of religious 
speculation the writer of the following pages has no 
sympathy. To him Jesus Christ is a Teacher of divine 
truth unmixed with human error, and the apostles men 
filled with the Holy Spirit, working as the Spirit of 
truth, and qualifying them to proclaim with authority, 
by tongue or pen, " all the words of this life." Here 
is not the place to state the grounds of such a confi- 
dence in the New Testament, or to repel the assaults 
which are now made on its teaching. The task would 
require a volume. All that can properly be done in 
this place is to express a sincere conviction that an 
authoritative revelation of God's method of grace is 



PREFACE. 5 

much needed by men ; that the Bible has proved, and 
will prove itself to be, such a revelation ; and that low 
views of its authority tend to theological speculation 
and unrest, while theological speculation tends, in 
turn, to low views of the authority of Scripture. 
With this conviction, a Biblical eschatology is the 
only door of escape from utter agnosticism as to the 
conditions of men after death. 

But assuming the divine authority of the Bible as 
a source of religious truth, the way to just conclusions 
respecting a future life is by no means easy. For 
nothing is more certain than these two statements, that 
the style of prophecy differs from that of history, and 
that the former is more difficult of interpretation than 
the latter. Why is this ? In what does the differ- 
ence between them consist ? First, prophetic language 
is more figurative than historical language. This will 
doubtless be admitted. But prophecy is sometimes 
couched in terms so literal that, when it is fulfilled, 
the foreshadowing sketch seems to be remarkably 
exact. This, however, is the exception, not the rule. 
Secondly, prophetic language is often typical. Thus 
the Jews expected the reappearance of Elijah himself 
as the harbinger of the Messiah; but Elijah was but 
the type of John the Baptist, who was sent to prepare 
the way of the Lord. Again, prophetic language 



6 PREFACE. 

may be fulfilled many times over in essentially the same 
way. 

Thus Joel predicted a wonderful outpouring of 
the Spirit of God, and Peter testifies that his words 
were fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. But a similar 
manifestation of the Spirit was witnessed by the same 
apostle at the house of Cornelius, and there is reason 
to believe that his working has been equally gracious 
and powerful in many religious awakenings since the 
ascension of Christ. The external manifestations have 
been indeed various ; but the divine energy one and 
the same. From all this it may certainly be inferred 
that the interpretation of prophecy requires a very 
broad and patient study of the whole record, and a 
deep consideration of what may be called the method 
of divine grace. Many difficulties will also vanish 
when the typical character of prophecy is fairly 
recognized — e. g. y those which confront the interpreter 
of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. 

Bearing in mind these things, the writer has endea- 
vored to ascertain as far as possible the meaning of 
God's word in relation to eschatology, and to exhibit 
that meaning as clearly as possible in this little book, 
which is now commended to the favor of Christ and 
his people. Alvah Hovey. 

Newton Centre, August 1^ 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory paragraph 11 

Chapter I. Natural Death 13-22 

1. Is the death of the body as a living organism 13/ 

2. Is the termination of animal life or living 16/ 

3. Is a separation of the soul from the body 17/ 

Objections to the last definition considered 19-22 

(a) The soul lives in a body, and cannot live apart 

from it , 19 

(b) It becomes unconscious if the brain is greatly in- 
jured 19 

(c) Its action improves with an improved brain 19/ 

(d) Nature has no breaks : continuity her law 20 

(e) The soul must have a body to be related to space. 20/ 
Quotation from Prof. John Fiske 21/ 

Chapter II. Kesurrection of the Dead 23-78 

Keason for the order of investigation adopted 23 

\ I. Evidence of the resurrection of the dead 23-31 

1. Direct affirmations or predictions of the fact 23/ 

2. Argumentative statements respecting it 25/ 

Meaning and use of verbs and nouns denoting resur- 
rection 29/ 

?.H. Properties of bodies given to saints at the resurrection, 31-46 

1. Direct teaching of Christ and his apostles on the 

subject 31/ 

2. Indirect teaching of the New Testament on the 

subject 40/ 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

JUL Time of the resurrection 57-78 

Four theories as to the time. The first two 47 

1. Christ's answer to the question of certain Sad- 

ducees 47/ 

2. Christ's words to the Jews in Jerusalem 51 

3. Christ's words to the Jews in Capernaum 51/ 

4. Christ's words to Martha 52/ 

5. Christ's promise to his disciples 54 

Result of our examination thus far. 54/ 

Next: the teaching of the apostles on this subject 55 

1. In Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians 55/ 

2. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians 58/ 

3. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians 60/ 

4. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, again 83/ 

The first and second theories found untenable 64/ 

Arguments for the Premillennial Advent considered... 66 

1. It is taught by Rev. 20 : 4-6. Reply 66/ 

2. Confirmed by texts which put the resurrection of 

the righteous before that of the wicked. Reply 69/ 

3. The apostles expected the second coming in their 

day 70 

4. Or, taught that it might come at any hour. Answer 70/ 

5. No millennium before the Second Advent, accord- 

ing to New Testament. Answer 72 

6. The proper reign of Christ to begin at his second 

coming. Answer 73 

Further answer to this theory. The Second Advent 

for judgment 74/ 

This Advent introduces "the last day" 76/ 

High character of most premillennialists 77 

At all events there is a middle state for most men 78 

Chapter III. Condition of Human Souls between 

Death and Resurrection 79-144 

§ I. Human souls are conscious in the middle state......... 79 



CONTENTS. 9 

PAGE 

1. The consciousness of departed spirits in general is 

clearly taught 79/ 

2. The consciousness of unbelievers is taught 81/ 

3. The consciousness of believers also 84/ 

Objections to this view considered 90-95 

(a) Death literally means extinction of conscious 

being 90/ 

(6) Adam must have understood by it extinction of 

conscious being ..*. 91 

(c) The dead are asleep: therefore unconscious 91/ 

(d) Certain passages of the Old Testament affirm this 92/ 

(e) Accounts of the last judgment presuppose it 93 

None of these objections conclusive 95 

\ II. Human souls not on probation in the middle state..,. 95-144 
Many suppose them to be on probation in that state. 

The number of such increasing 95/ 

I. Passages alleged in support of their view 97/ 

1. The principal one, 1 Pet. 3 : 19, considered.. 97/ 

2. The second one, 1 Pet. 4: 6, also considered 107/ 

3. Paul's words in Eph. 4: 8, 9, examined 113/ 

4. Restoration supposed by some to be taught by Paul, 114/ 

5. The same doctrine discovered in another passage. 115 

6. Also in yet another passage of Paul 115/ 

Exposition of this last passage 115/ 

7. Probation after death taught by Christ. Answer 119/ 

II. Passages opposed to the theory of probation after 

death 121/ 

1. Those which represent the state of unbelievers 

after death as already fixed 122/ 

2. Passages which describe the last judgment 127/ 

3. Passages which associate judgment with death 134/ 

Criticism of " Progressive Theology " 135 / 

Wisdom of limiting probation to this life 1 39/ 

Chapter IV. The Last Judgment 145-155 

Differences between judgment and the last judgment... 145 



10 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

1. The last judgment will be conducted by Christ, 

with his saints 146/ 

2. It will be a universal judgment, or a judgment of 

all mankind (and perhaps of evil angels) 148 f 

3. It will be a righteous judgment 151/ 

Chapter Y. The Final State of Believers 156-160 

Biblical representations of it figurative . 156 

1. It will begin directly after the last judgment 157 

2. It will continue the same in kind forever 157 

3. Its blessedness will be enhanced by faithfulness 

here 158 

4. Its blessedness will forever increase 158/ 

Chapter VI. The Final State of Unbelievers 161-176 

1. It will begin directly after the last judgment 161 

2. It will continue the same in kind forever 161 f 

3. It will be worse for some than for others 164/* 

4i It will bring no useless suffering 165/ 

Conclusion 167 

The vast preponderance of good over evil in the moral 

government of God 167-176 

Appendix 177-180 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 



Few men pass through their earthly life without 
feeling at times a solemn curiosity in respect to its 
issues. Their consciousness of sin, and of its malign 
influence on their present condition, rarely fails to 
awaken apprehension as to the future. And if this 
apprehension is removed by whole-hearted trust in 
Christ, a presentiment of endless life takes its place, 
and kindles a strong desire to learn all that can be 
known concerning that unspeakable good. But there 
is only one source of knowledge which offers any satis- 
factory explanation of death, and of the states of being 
that follow it. That source is the word of God; 
and it will be the aim of the following pages to present 
the results of a careful study of that word, in so far as 
it sheds any light on the nature of death or on exist- 
ence thereafter. The light may be less abundant than 
seems to us desirable, but it is all that the blessed Lord 
has seen fit to give, and it must, therefore, be enough 
for the discipline of men in their present state. " Lead 
kindly light amid the encircling gloom." 

The topics to be considered are natural death, the 
resurrection of the dead, the state between death and 

11 



12 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

resurrection, the last judgment, the final state of believ- 
ers, and the final state of unbelievers. The reason for 
examining the testimony of Scripture as to the resur- 
rection of the dead, before studying what is said of the 
state between death and resurrection, will be noticed 
at a later point. 



CHAPTER I. 

NATURAL DEATH. 

To the question, What is natural death? the Bible 
appears to give the following answers : 

(1) It is the death of the body, considered as a living 
organism.— This is shown by the language of Jesus 
Christ : " Be not afraid of them which kill the body, 
and after that have no more that they can do " (Luke 
12:4). Three things are noticeable here: First, an 
implication that the body is not the whole man. If it 
were in strictness the whole man, killing the body 
would be killing the spirit also ; destroying the body 
would be putting an end to the whole being. But this 
was not the case, and therefore we know that Jesus 
Christ looked upon the body of man as only one con- 
stituent of his nature. Secondly, an implication that 
the life of the body may be destroyed, and yet some 
part of the being survive. For if this be not the case, 
the last clause — "and after that have no more that 
they can do" — would be without sense. Moreover, 
the surviving part cannot suffer injury unless it is 
alive. That which has absolutely ceased to live has 
ceased to be affected by gain or loss, by joy or pain. 
Thirdly, an implication that the part of man which 
survives the death of the body is the soul or spirit, 
and therefore the central and controlling element of 

13 



14 BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 

man's nature. This is definitely stated in Matthew's 
Gospel : " Be not afraid of them which kill the body, 
but are not able to kill the soul" (10: 28). So the 
something additional to killing the body, which men 
cannot do, is killing the soul; and that which con- 
tinues alive, when the body is crucified, or burned at 
the stake, is the soul ((puzyj). It is important to ob- 
serve this use of the term soul, for it is sometimes 
employed to denote the animal life which perishes 
with the body. Here, on the contrary, it is synony- 
mous with spirit, meaning the part of our being which 
the sword cannot harm. These two passages preserve 
to us a saying of the Lord Jesus, the value of which 
cannot be overestimated. 

The same view of natural death appears to 
underlie the language of Peter : " But even if ye 
suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye . . . For it 
is better, if it be the will of God, that ye suffer for 
well-doing, than for evil-doing. Because Christ also 
suffered * once for sins, the just for the unjust, . . • 
being put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit " 
(3 : 14-18). That is to say, the followers of Christ 
ought not to look upon martyrdom as the greatest of 

* Whether the original text read "suffered" (inaSev with 
B K L P and many cursives) or " died" {an&avev, with X A C 
and many cursives, etc.), is not perfectly certain, and does not 
affect the meaning. Perhaps the circumstance that the former 
verb is frequently used by Peter in this Epistle, and the latter 
nowhere save in this passage, renders it probable that the change 
was made from the latter to the former in copying. But I have 
allowed the common reading to stand. 



BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 15 

evils. Nay rather, if. they should suffer death while 
engaged in well-doing and because they adhered to 
righteousness, the way to bodily death would be the 
way to a higher life of the spirit — even as it had been 
in the case of their Lord. If Peter does not in this 
language assume the truth of Christ's representation 
in regard to the power of man to kill the body without 
killing the soul, it is difficult to discover any consistent 
meaning in his words. But if he entertains the pre- 
cise view expressed by Jesus, his language is per- 
spicuous and forcible. 

In his remarks on the relation of faith and works, 
James makes use of this language : " For as the body 
apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from 
works is dead " (2 : 26) ; and this implies that, in his 
opinion, death might be predicated of the body in dis- 
tinction from the spirit. With these expressions may 
be compared the words of God to Adam : " In the 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return 
unto the ground ; for out of it thou wast taken : for 
dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return " (Gen. 
3 : 19). One or the other of two interpretations must 
be given to this language ; either it refers to the whole 
nature of Adam, and pronounces it material, or it 
refers to his body only, and pronounces it earth-born 
and earth-bound. But the former explanation is in- 
consistent with both accounts of the man's creation 
(Gen. 1 : 26, 27 ; 2 : 7), one of which declares that he 
was created in the image of God, and the other that 
when God formed him of the dust of the ground, he 



16 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. For it is 
impossible to read the book of Genesis and believe 
that its author considered God a material being, or to 
interpret fairly the words of Gen. 2 : 7, without ad- 
mitting that God imparted to man something more 
than a physical nature. On the other hand, there is 
no real objection to the view that the words of God, 
" dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," refer 
to Adam in so far as he was a physical being; in other 
words, to the bodily organism on which his earthly 
life depended. For men may be called dust, or flesh, 
or flesh and blood, when the context readily guides 
the mind to their outward being or organism, just as 
properly as they may be called souls, when the context 
suggests their inward nature, or spirit. 

(2) It is a termination of animal life, or living. — 
This life is sometimes denominated "psyche" (<poxy]) 
by the sacred writers. Thus : " For they are dead 
who sought the young child's life " (Matt. 2 : 20) ; 
" Is it lawful on the Sabbath day ... to save a life, 
or to kill ? " (Mark 3:4); " To save a life, or to de- 
stroy it ? " (Luke 6:9); " If a man cometh unto me, 
and hateth not ... his own life also, he cannot be 
my disciple" (Id. 14: 26); "He that loveth his life, 
loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world 
shall keep it unto life eternal" (John 12: 25). See 
also John 13 : 37, 38 ; Acts 15 : 26 ; 20 : 24 ; 1 John 
3:16; Rev. 8 : 9 ; 16 : 3. In all these passages the 
animal life is called psyche, and in most of them there 
is some reference to its termination or loss at death. In 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 17 

a few of them, however, the word is used in a higher 
as well as in the lower sense — that is, as meaning true 
spiritual life contrasted with physical life, or perhaps 
with living in flesh. (See Phil. 1 : 21, 22.) 

(3) It is a separation of the soul from the *body. — 
This, too, is clearly revealed by the Holy Scriptures. 
Thus we read that "the dust shall return to the earth 
as it was, and the spirit unto God who gave it " (Eccl. 
12: 7), a passage which is probably founded on the 
record in Gen. 2 : 7, and which strongly confirms the 
interpretation of Gen. 3 : 19, given above. "And he 
bowed his head, and gave up his spirit " (John 19: 
30), where "gave up" represents a Greek word 
(-apidwxsv), which probably signifies delivered up. " The 
verb used for 'delivered up' is peculiarly important" 
(Schaff ). " The choice of the word leaves no doubt as 
to the meaning of the Evangelist ... It was his own 
free will to die." Compare the language of his dying 
'cry, recorded by Luke: "Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit" (23 : 46). See also the record of 
Stephen's language: "And they stoned Stephen, call- 
ing on the Lord and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit" (Acts 7: 59). Surely this is conclusive as to 
Stephen's belief in the existence of his spirit when 
separated from the body. Equally clear is the sense 
of Paul's words : " I am in a strait betwixt the. two, 
having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it 
is very far better. Yet to abide in the flesh is more 
needful for your sake" (Phil. 1: 23). Here the real 
self, the spiritual personality of the apostle, is repre- 



18 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

sented as being now in the flesh, but as able to depart 
from the flesh, in order thereby to be more immedi- 
ately with Christ. And this departing out of the 
flesh to be with Christ, is but another expression for 
dying — "for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 

The word translated to depart (avakvaai) means to 
weigh anchor , or to break up (one's tent). Paul uses 
the corresponding noun in writing to Timothy : " The 
day of my departure is at hand " (2 Tim. 4 : 6). It 
will also be recollected that, according to Luke, Moses 
and Elijah conversed with Jesus on the Mount of 
Transfiguration concerning " his exodus, which he was 
about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9: 31). 
So, likewise, Peter says of himself : " Knowing that 
the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly," and 
adds in the next verse : " I will give diligence that at 
every time ye may be able after my exodus to call these 
things to remembrance" (2 Pet. 1 : 15, 16). Further 
examples are unnecessary. 

Thus the Scriptures are clear and consistent in their 
teaching .about death. It is a change in which the 
body dies, in which the organic life terminates, in 
which the spirit is separated from the body. And this 
teaching of Scripture is readily accepted by the judg- 
ment of mankind, especially as to the first two particu- 
lars, which might without much difficulty be reduced 
to one. But as to the separation of the soul from the 
body, and its existence as a pure spirit, the opinions of 
thoughtful students of life are various, and it seems 
necessary to look at certain objections to the obvious 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 19 

meaning of Scripture. These objections are founded 
on the vital connection which now exists between the 
soul and the brain, and are urged by a considerable 
number of physiologists. 

It is said (a) "that the soul now lives in a physical 
body, and therefore it cannot live apart from such a 
body." But the inference is plainly illegitimate. The 
only legitimate inference would be that the soul cannot 
live just such a life as it now lives apart from such a 
body as it now has. Whether it can or cannot live at 
all without a body must be learned from something 
besides the mere fact that it now lives in a body. 

(6) "That the soul becomes unconscious when the 
brain is greatly injured : hence it must be unconscious 
if the brain is destroyed." This, too, is a false infer- 
ence ; for the soul is still organically connected with an 
injured brain, while there is no reason to suppose it 
organically connected with a destroyed brain. While 
the spirit acts by means of a living organ, that organ 
must be in a condition for use ; but this does not show 
that the spirit cannot live or act apart from a physical 
organ. If I am in a house, I can only look upon the 
surrounding objects through its windows; but open 
the doors and let me go out of the house, and the win- 
dows are no longer of any use to me. I can see in 
every direction, though they are destroyed. 

(c) " That the souPs action improves with an improv- 
ing brain ; hence its action after death cannot be better 
than it is here, unless it has a better brain than is pos- 
sessed in the present life." But this inference is just 



20 BIBLICAL E8CHATOLOGY. 

as uncertain as the preceding one. While the soul is 
in its body much will depend on the excellence of that 
body; but this fact neither proves nor disproves its 
power to live and act apart from a body. 

(d) " Nature has no breaks; continuity through 
evolution is her law. Hence, the new body must 
spring out of the old, as the butterfly springs out of 
the chrysalis." To this statement we reply that science 
teaches nothing whatever as to the effect of death upon 
the continuance of individual life after that event; for 
the worm in becoming a butterfly does not die, as the 
butterfly afterwards dies. The illustration fails at the 
very point where it is supposed to be of use. 

Thus it appears to be impossible to reason from the 
condition of mind in its present material organism to 
its condition when released from that organism. From 
the fact that an injury to the brain interferes with the 
action of consciousness, it cannot be inferred that a de- 
struction of the brain must be a destruction of con- 
scious existence, or of the soul. The most that can be 
admitted is this, that at present, while the vital con- 
nection between them subsists, the action of the soul 
may be associated, either as cause or consequence, with 
the action of the brain. The soul now exists, whether 
conscious or unconscious, in close union with a bodily 
organism ; but who can show that it cannot exist with- 
out the support or the incumbrance of a material 
organism ? 

(e) If it be affirmed that "the soul must have a 
body of some kind, in order to be related to space, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 21 

and to have a point of support in the same," we ask 
how it is known that the only possible connection of 
spirit with matter is a vital one? A different connec- 
tion is just as conceivable as the one with which we 
are most familiar.* Moreover, the assertion that a 
being is purely spiritual is not equivalent to the asser- 
tion that it is unrelated to space. The nucleus of the 
energies of a spirit may be a point of consciousness, 
and the going forth of those energies be limited by the 
nature of the being, so that it is cognizant of space, f 
And as to support for a disembodied spirit, we need 
not be anxious. Till we know what attraction is, the 
power which is said to hold the planets in their orbits, 
we need not deny the possibility of other than material 
support to a spiritual being. Perchance a divine 
energy, in a way incomprehensible to us, upholds the 
planets; and if so* it may surely be the support of 
disembodied souls. 

The words of Prof. John Fiske are directly appli- 

* The connection of oxygen with hydrogen in water is wholly 
different from its connection with nitrogen in air. So the un- 
known power which, under certain conditions, appears as elec- 
tricity, is supposed to appear under other conditions as galvan- 
ism, or even magnetism. How rash, then, to assume that the 
human spirit can only act when it is in vital union with an 
organism ! As if one were to say that oxygen has no power or 
energy, unless it be chemically united with hydrogen I 

t An expression suggested by Principal J. E. Walter's treatise 
on "The Perception of Space and Matter," p. 244 f., and by 
Prof. H. Ulrici's treatise, entitled "G-ott und die Natur," p. 
312 f. Both regard the soul as extended, and their arguments 
are worthy of examination, though not essential to a compre- 
hension of my statement. Cf. Lotze's Microcosmus 3: 2. 



22 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

cable to the objection under notice : " Cerebral physi- 
ology says nothing about another life. Indeed, why 
should it? The last place in the world to which I 
should go for information about a state of things in 
which thought and feeling can exist without a cerebrum 
would be cerebral physiology. The materialistic as- 
sumption that there is no such state of things, and the 
life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the 
body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless 
assumption that is known to the history of philosophy. 
No evidence of it can be alleged beyond the familiar 
fact that during the present life we know Soul only in 
its association with the Body, and therefore cannot dis- 
cover disembodied soul without dying ourselves. This 
fact must always prevent us from obtaining direct 
evidence for the belief in the soul's survival. But a 
negative presumption is not created by the absence of 
proof in cases where, in the nature of things, proof is 
inaccessible." (" The Destiny of Man," p. 110.) 

From this excursion into the realms of science and 
philosophy, which have in reality nothing to urge against 
the testimony of Christ and his apostles, we return with 
unspeakable satisfaction to that testimony, and on the 
strength of it hold that human souls do not pass into a 
state of unconsciousness at death. But this subject we 
shall have occasion to examine more thoroughly in the 
third chapter. 



CHAPTER II. 

RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

We postpone a discussion of the questions relating to 
the state between death and resurrection until we have 
weighed the testimony of Scripture as to a resurrection 
of the dead : first, because the reality of an interme- 
diate state depends (a) upon the fact of the resurrection 
of the dead, uniting soul and body once more, and 
(6) upon the existence of an interval of time between 
death and resurrection; and, secondly, because many 
Christians now believe that natural death and resur- 
rection from the dead are contemporaneous events, or 
rather two sides of the same event, and it is important 
to recognize the points which awaken interest at the 
present hour. It will then be necessary for us to 
consider in this section the evidence of a resurrection 
of the dead, the properties of the bodies which saints 
will receive at the resurrection, and the time when the 
resurrection takes place. Our answers to all the ques- 
tions suggested by these topics must be chiefly drawn 
from the word of God. 

§ I. Evidence of the resurrection of the dead. — This 
evidence is wholly Biblical. And fortunately it is 
ample. In confirmation of this statement reference 
may be made : 

(1) To direct affirmations or predictions of the fad.— 

23 



24 BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 

Among these every one will place the words of Christ 
to the Jews : " Marvel not at this ; for the hour 
cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear 
his voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done 
(or did) good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they 
that have done (or practiced) ill, unto the resurrection 
of judgment " (John 5 : 28, 29). Equally direct is 
the testimony of Paul before Felix : " This I confess 
unto thee, that, after the way which they call a sect, so 
serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things 
which are according to the law, and which are written 
in the prophets : having hope toward God, w^hich these 
themselves also look for, that there shall be a resurrec- 
tion both of the just and unjust" (Acts 24 : 14, 15). 
With these two passages may be associated the words 
of John : "And the sea gave up the dead which were 
in it ; and death and hades gave up the dead which 
were in them ; and they w^ere judged every man ac- 
cording to their works" (Rev. 20: 13). For every 
one will be convinced that these words imply a resur- 
rection of the dead, body and soul being reunited, if 
he considers the reference to the sea, as well as the 
reference to death and hades, as really significant. 
Observe also that, in Heb. 6 : 1, 2, six first truths of 
the Christian religion are enumerated in such a way as 
to show that they were elementary and familiar, and 
that one of them is the doctrine of a " resurrection of 
the dead." Hence we conclude that it was a doctrine 
then taught to every disciple of Christ — a conclusion 
which agrees with the accounts of Apostolic preaching 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 2£ 

preserved in the New Testament. For Peter, in his 
discourse to the mixed multitude on the Day of Pente- 
cost, lays great stress on the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. (Acts 2 : 24 f.) The same fact is emphasized 
in his address to the men of Israel who ran together in 
Solomon's porch, after the lame man had been healed 
in the name of Jesus. (Acts 3 : 15 f.) And when this 
apostle, together with John, was afterwards brought 
before the Sanhedrin, he reiterated the same truth: 
"Be it known to you all, and to all the people of 
Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, in 
him doth this man stand here before you whole " (Acts 
4: 10). Again, when brought once more before the 
council, and reminded of the fact that they had been 
forbidden to preach in the name of Jesus, Peter and 
the apostles answered : " We must obey God rather 
than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, 
whom ye slew, hanging him on a tree " (Acts 5 : 29, 
30). So, too, when Peter preached to Cornelius and 
all his house, he bore witness, not only to the death of 
Jesus by the hand of the Jews, but also to his resur- 
rection on the third day by the power of God. (Acts 
10 : 40.) In like manner Paul insisted on the resur- 
rection of Christ as a cardinal truth of the gospel, car- 
rying with it the resurrection of all his disciples, save 
those only who should be alive on the earth at his 
final appearing. 

(2) To argumentative statements concerning the resur- 
rection of the dead, — Thus in Paul's first Epistle to the 



26 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

Corinthians we read the following language : " Now 
if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the 
dead, how say some among you that there is no resur- 
rection of the dead ? But if there is no resurrection of 
the dead, neither hath Christ been raised. . . . But 
now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first 
fruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came 
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all 
be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ 
the first fruits : then they that are Christ's at his 
coming" (1 Cor. 15 : 12, 13, 20-23). It is here per- 
fectly evident that the apostle argues for the resurrec- 
tion of Christians who die from the well-attested fact 
of Christ's resurrection. Every one, therefore, who 
believes that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead 
may and should believe that all his followers who 
sleep in the dust of 1he earth will likewise be raised; 
and, conversely, every one who denies the possibility, or, 
indeed, certainty of the resurrection of Christians, must, 
if consistent, deny the resurrection of Christ. 

The same argument seems to have been in his mind 
when he wrote to the Thessalonians : " For if we 
believe (as we surely do) that Jesus died and rose 
again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus 
will God bring with him " (1 Thess. 4 : 14). Read 
also his words in 2 Corinthians : " We also believe, 
and therefore also we speak ; knowing that he which 
raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us up also with 
Jesus, and shall present us with you " (4 : 14). Add 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 27 

to this his language in 1 Cor. 6 : 14 : " God both 
raised the Lord, and will raise up us through his 
power," and it must be accepted as an unquestion- 
able fact, that Paul believed nothing to be more cer- 
tain than the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and 
the consequent resurrection of the members of his body. 

But it is not quite so clear that he saw in the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ the ground or reason for the 
resurrection of unbelievers. Yet of the fact that these 
will be raised, he speaks with unqualified assurance — 
even as Jesus himself predicted the same event and 
affirmed that it would take place in response to the 
voice of the Son of man. 

This evidence would be ample, if it had not been 
strenuously assailed in recent times. Contemplated 
impartially, it seems to be clear, positive, consist- 
ent, and without a serious flaw. On it the apostles 
staked their honor and life. Believing it with all the 
heart, they went everywhere preaching the word, and 
an essential part of that word was their testimony to 
the death and resurrection of Christ. Let us look for 
a moment at some of the objections which are made to 
their testimony. 

One of them is this — "that Jesus appeared after his 
resurrection to none but his friends. Had he been' 
raised from the dead, and had he wished to assure men 
of this fact, he would doubtless have appeared to sdme 
of his foes also." Though this seems to be a plausible 
objection, it has really no force. Jesus was better 
known by his disciples than by his foes, and they were 



28 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

therefore better able to identify his person. Moreover, 
the hatred of his foes was so bitter and relentless as to 
render it morally certain that no evidence would have 
been fairly received or given by them. It must also 
be remembered that during his earthly ministry Christ 
habitually declined to do miracles at the call of cap- 
tious men. He would not cast pearls before swine. 
On the other hand, his disciples, though heartbroken 
and discouraged by his death, still loved him with sin- 
cere devotion, and, w T hen convinced of his resurrection 
from the dead, would be faithful witnesses for him to 
the ends of the earth. Finally, he did appear to one 
of his foes on the road to Damascus, and that foe be- 
came a true friend and servant. Had he appeared to 
fifty of his enemies, making them his friends, their 
whole-hearted testimony would have been impeached 
by our modern critics, because it was the testimony of 
friends. But how long is it since the evidence of per- 
secutors and murderers was ascertained to be more 
trustworthy than that of other men ? 

A second objection may be thus expressed : " It is 
possible that Mary Magdalene, by an illusion of the 
senses, thought she saw Jesus and heard his voice. 
Excited by her report, some of the apostles imagined 
that their crucified Master appeared to them," etc. 
But this vision theory is utterly inconsistent with the 
plain testimony of both evangelists and apostles. To 
believe it we must reject the distinct record of Christ's 
predictions of his resurrection on the third day, the 
unqualified assertion of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 29 

John that these predictions were fulfilled, the bold and 
public assertion of the same fact by Peter in Jerusalem, 
the deliberate affirmation of Paul to the same effect, 
with his powerful array of witnesses, and the confi- 
dence with which he himself and the other apostles 
rested the truth of their entire message on the fact of 
Christ's resurrection. That so many persons should 
have been deceived by visions — a dozen or even five 
hundred at a time — is incredible. That men like 
James and Thomas should have been made to believe 
that they saw the Lord when they did not is likewise 
incredible. That the writers of the New Testament 
should have proclaimed with one voice the miracles of 
Christ and his resurrection from the dead, while both 
were imaginary, and should nevertheless have pictured 
to our minds in him the ideal man, "holy, blameless, 
undefiled," is altogether incredible. There is no fact 
in the history of Jesus Christ more certain than his 
resurrection from the dead. And if he rose, we may 
be sure that his followers will be raised in due time. 

It is needless to collect further evidence from Scrip- 
ture that the dead are to be raised. Yet a few state- 
ments in respect to the words employed by the New 
Testament writers to denote this great change will not 
be without interest to those who read this investi- 
gation. 

The verb anistemi (&vt<rT7}/ii) occurs twenty-one times, 
being used ten times of the resurrection of Christ, ten 
times of the resurrection at the last day, and once of 
reanimation. The noun anastasis (avdtrrafft^ derived 



30 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

from this verb, occurs forty-one times, twelve times 
of the resurrection of Christ, twenty-eight times of the 
final resurrection, and once of reanimation. Subtract- 
ing the two instances which speak of reanimation, the 
resurrection is spoken of sixty times by means of the 
verb, anistemi, and its corresponding noun. The verb 
is transitive in the present, first aorist, and future 
active forms, meaning to set up, to raise up, to make to 
stand up, while it is intransitive in the perfect, pluper- 
fect, and second aorist active forms, and in the middle 
voice, meaning to rise. Undoubtedly the literal force 
of these words points to the raising up, or the rising 
up, of some one from a prostrate position, and so it 
suggests a change in the body rather than in the spirit, 
or at least a change by which the spirit is reembodied 
for life and action. 

The second verb is egeiro (lydpa)), which occurs 
eighty times in the New Testament, being used forty- 
seven times of Christ' s resurrection, nineteen times of 
the final resurrection, and fifteen times of reanimation. 
(By " reanimation " is meant a restoration of life in its 
earlier form.) The noun, egersfc (zyepGis), is found 
but once, and then possibly, though not certainly, in 
the sense of reanimation. (Matt. 27 : 53.) The pri- 
mary and literal meaning of the verb is to awaken, 
as from sleep, and then, in the New Testament, to 
raise from the dead. It seems to have been chosen by 
the Saviour and his apostles as a term answering to 
the idea of death as a state of sleep. But whether 
the condition and appearance of the dead body sug- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 31 

gested the idea of sleep, or rather the supposed con- 
dition of the soul, cannot be determined by the literal 
sense of this verb. 

§ II. Properties of the bodies given to the saints at 
the resurrection. — In studying this subject caution is 
needed, for hasty inferences will not be likely to stand 
the test of time. Instruction may, however, be drawn 
from two Biblical sources — namely, the direct teaching 
of the Lord and of his apostles, and the way in 
which Christ used his resurrection body. 

(1) The direct teaching of the Lord and of his 
apostles in respect to the raised bodies of the saints. — 
In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus is represented 
as saying to the Sadducees: "The sons of this age 
{peon) marry, and are given in marriage ; but they that 
are accounted worthy to attain to that age (ceon), and 
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are 
given in marriage : for neither can they die any more : 
for they are equal unto the angels ; and are sons of 
God, being sons of the resurrection" (20: 34-36). 
To say nothing of doubtful points in this language, 
two things are plainly stated — namely, that neither 
marriage nor death will have place with those who 
have been raised from the dead. Births will be 
unknown, for none will die; all will be immortal, 
as if in this respect they were sons of God. Nothing 
is here said concerning the bodies of good men in 
the resurrection life ; but it is fair to assume that, if 
Jesus had conceived of the raised saints as purely 
spiritual beings, he would have said this unequivo- 



32 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

cally, for it would have been a complete answer to the 
special objection implied in the question of the Sad- 
ducees. Instead of this he simply affirmed that in 
the resurrection they would be deathless. I take it 
then for certain that Jesus assumed the completeness 
of men in body and spirit after the resurrection, 
though he taught that this corruptible body would 
be replaced by an incorruptible one. 

Josephus informs us that the Pharisees "believe 
souls to have an immortal vigor, and that under the 
earth there will be both rewards and punishments to 
those who in life cared for virtue, on the one hand, or for 
evil on the other — to these indeed an eternal prison is 
assigned, but to those the relief of living again " (Ant. 
XVIII. 1 : 3). The "living again," or " coming to life 
again " (av«/3<oDv), cannot mean anything less than resur- 
rection from the dead, for the Pharisees are reported to 
believe that the souls of the wicked are " imprisoned 
forever," which certainly implies their conscious ex- 
istence in the unseen world. This is also required by 
their belief that souls have an "immortal vigor" 
(dtfavarov (<#&). The " relief of living again," which 
is granted to the righteous must therefore be something 
else than existence in a disembodied state ; it must be 
a return to life in the body. This is confirmed by a 
passage in his " Jewish Wars," which declares that the 
Pharisees believe " every soul incorruptible, but that 
only the soul of the good man passes over into another 
body (ek irepnv aw/ia), while on the contrary that of 
the bad man is punished with eternal punishment" 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 33 

(aldta) n;ia)p(a xtddZetrftai). The same writer testifies 
that " the doctrine of the Sadducees destroys the souls 
(of men) with their bodies " (XVIII. 1:4); also, that 
" the Sadducees reject the permanence or existence of 
the soul after death, and the rewards and punishments 
of an invisible world " (B. J. II. 8 : 14) ; and this testi- 
mony agrees, as far as it goes, with the words of Luke : 
"The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, 
neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess 
both" (Acts 23: 8).* 

So, then, the Sadducees meant to oppose the current 
Pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection, as a doctrine 
which implied a complete resumption of human rela- 
tions in the body and in society. In his reply Jesus 
did not say that there would be no resurrection at all, 
that the souls of men would remain without bodies 



* There are also references to a resurrection of the dead in the 
Apocrypha, which may be associated with the testimony of Jo- 
sephus— e. g., 2 Esdras 2: 16, 23, and 2 Mac. 7: 9, 14, 23, 36. 
The second of the seven brothers is made to say : "Thou like a 
fury takest us out of this present life, but the King of the world 
shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting 
life" (ver. 9). The fourth also : "It is good, being put to death 
by men, to look for hope from God to be raised up again by 
him" (ver. 14). And the mother : "Doubtless the Creator of 
the world .... will also of his own mercy give you breath and 
life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his laws' 
sake" (ver. 23). So too in Esdras the Lord is represented as 
sajnng: "And those that be dead will I raise up again from 
their places, and bring them out of their graves ; " and again : 
"Wheresoever thou findest the dead, take them and bury them, 
and I will give thee the first place in my resurrection" (vs. 16, 
23 of 2 Esdras). 

C 



34 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

forever, and that a resumption of conjugal life would 
on that account be impossible ; but, on the contrary, he 
asserted the fact of a resurrection, as something presup- 
posed by the life of men after death, and taught that 
family relations, as known to us here, would not obtain 
after the resurrection, because men would no longer be 
subject to death. In a word, he corrected the error 
into which the Sadducees had fallen, by teaching the 
true doctrine which was afterwards stated more fully 
by Paul. 

Moreover, the words of Christ in John 5 : 28, 29, 
" Marvel not at this : for the hour cometh in which all 
that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall 
come forth," certainly imply a resurrection of body and 
spirit together. A mere continuance of life after death 
would have been expressed in other language. Some- 
thing which is at least analogous to that which was laid 
in the tomb will be given to every man at the resur- 
rection. The soul will be reembodied, and human 
nature restored to its integrity. Indeed, the most ob- 
vious meaning of the words would make the entombed 
body the basis of the raised body. But when he adds, 
" they that have done good, unto a resurrection of life," 
it is difficult to avoid the conviction that he meant by 
the word "life" imperishable life — that is, the life of 
a deathless spirit united with an incorruptible body, a 
life strong and blessed both in its natural and in its 
moral condition. This is the obvious purport of his 
words. Two things may then be inferred from the 
answer of Jesus to the Sadducees, in Luke, and to the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 35 

Jews, in John — namely, that the dead will receive 
bodies of some sort at the resurrection, and that these 
bodies will be incorruptible, imperishable. 

Passing now to the writings of Paul, the same 
truths will be found, yet more fully expressed. After 
asserting the resurrection of Christ positively, and 
proving it by accumulated evidence, and using it as 
a pledge of the saints' resurrection, the apostle refutes 
certain objections which had been made in Corinth to 
this doctrine. The principal objection was apparently 
taken from the difficulty of imagining any physical 
organism adapted to the future and eternal life of the 
soul. Here is the old Sadduceean cavil again, though 
proposed without any conscious hostility to Christ. 
But some one will say, "How are the dead raised? 
And with what manner of body do they corae?" 
(1 Cor. 15: 35). In answer to this objection, the 
apostle does not say, " The resurrection is a purely 
spiritual affair, the entrance of the soul at death upon 
a new and higher life." Yet this would naturally 
have been the substance of his reply, if he had not 
believed that the dead would be raised embodied ; 
for it would have been the one simple and conclusive 
answer to the objection. But he insists on the differ- 
ence between the bodies of saints in their present life, 
and the bodies which they will receive at the resur- 
rection. And he prepares the minds of his readers 
for this truth, by reminding them of the difference 
between the various plants and animals with which 
they themselves were familiar. "There is one flesh 



36 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh 
of birds, and another of fishes" (ver. 39). There are 
many varieties of grain, distinguishable from one 
another in stalk and hue and taste. Shrubs and trees 
are of many kinds, no two of which are alike in fibre 
or odor or strength, in bark, or leaf, or flower. Nor 
are the heavenly bodies mere repetitions of one another. 
"Star differeth from star in glory" (ver. 41). Hence 
the constitution of human bodies in the resurrection 
life cannot safely be inferred from the constitution of 
human bodies in the present life. 

Having thus prepared his readers for the truth, the 
apostle sets forth in bold language the difference 
between human bodies as they are when laid in the 
grave, and human bodies as they will be when raised 
by the power of God. Speaking of the body of man 
in these two states, he says: "It is sown in corruption, 
it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, it 
is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it is raised 
in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a 
spiritual body" (vs. 42-44). The first and last of 
these contrasts are worthy of special consideration. 
In the first, our present body is said to be corruptible, 
and our future body incorruptible. And this dis- 
tinction is so important, that Paul returns to it again, 
and reaffirms it very positively. "Flesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God." ..." For the 
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised 
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this 
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 37 

must put on immortality." Earnest and exalted lan- 
guage ! By it the apostle declares the bodies of saints 
after the resurrection to be incorruptible and therefore 
undying. They will be fit organs for "the spirits of 
just men made perfect," because they will be as secure 
from death as those spirits. And this, it will be 
remembered, was also the teaching of Christ. (Luke 
20: 35, 36.) Just what is involved in the third con- 
trast, "it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power" 
(duvdfist), is not perfectly certain ; perhaps it refers to 
the human body as unable at present to resist or 
control the forces of nature, except in a very slight 
degree, as easily exhausted, easily mutilated, easily 
destroyed, while the body that is raised will have 
unfailing vigor, great mastery over nature, and ability 
to serve the spirit with wonderful effectiveness. 

In the last contrast, "It is sown a natural body, it 
is raised a spiritual body," we have a still more inter- 
esting thought. Some have supposed that the word 
"spiritual" refers to the substance of which the re- 
newed body will be made. But against this opinion 
there are two objections to be urged : first, that spirit 
has none of the properties which are embraced in the 
idea of a body, neither extension, nor shape, nor fitness 
to be used as an instrument ; and, second, that the ob- 
vious relation of the adjective spiritual to the adjective 
natural forbids us to suppose that it describes the stuff 
of which the resurrection body is composed. For the 
latter adjective would not have been psychical (^^xrfv), 
but rather material (zo'ixdv), if Paul had referred to the 



38 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

substance of our present body. The substance of the 
human body is nowhere else called " psychical," and 
an adjective from the word psyche, meaning soul or 
life, must point to the function rather than to the sub- 
stance of our present bodies. This is evident. What, 
then, do these words signify in this place ? The sim- 
plest answer is, that they are employed to mark the 
office or function of the present body and of the future 
body, respectively. The present body is called psychi- 
cal (" natural "), because it is the organ and servant of 
animal life which, as previously shown, is often de- 
nominated psyche (see p. 12, (2)). And the renewed 
body is called pneumatic (" spiritual "), because it is 
the organ and servant of the spirit, which is denomi- 
nated in Scripture pneuma (jrveufia). Said Augustine : 
" As spirit that serves flesh is called carnal, so flesh that 
serves spirit is called spiritual ; not because it is con- 
verted into spirit, but because it is subject to spirit 
with a spontaneous and marvelous facility of obeying, 
since it has no sense of weariness, no liability to decay, 
and no tardiness of motion ; " and a better account of 
the matter has been given by no modern writer. Elli- 
cott interprets " a psychical body" as meaning "a body 
in which the psyche is the predominating potency," 
and "a spiritual body" as meaning "a body in which 
the spirit (or nveupLa) of man .... is the predomi- 
nating influence." The same interpretation is defended 
by Alford, Shore, Evans, Beet, Meyer, and the best 
modern scholars. Canon Evans says : " In this ex- 
pression, spiritual body, no indication is given of the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 39 

substance of that i house not made with hands ' ; for 
the term i spiritual ' does not signify made of spirit or 
of any airy texture ; it signifies ' suited to spirit ' ; it 
implies a celestial body meet to entertain a saintly 
spirit, a new tenement with a new organism attuned to 
the harmonies of the invisible world." (Expositor, 
May, 1885; see also an article by Dr. Edw. Hitch- 
cock, in "Bib. Sac./' 1860, p. 303, f.) Prof. Weiss, 
however, maintains that the spiritual body will be a 
body composed of a supramundane luminous sub- 
stance, often called "glory" (&*?«), as in Phil. 3 : 21, 
where the apostle calls the raised body of Christ "the 
body of his glory." It is essentially the Shekinah. 
But this is a forced explanation. Not one of the pas- 
sages which he relies upon proves his view to be Scrip- 
tural ; while the contrast between " dishonor " (arc/ua) 
and "~glory" (&*%) in the passage before us, shows 
that " glory " is not conceived as a luminous substance, 
but rather as the qualities of the renewed body which 
commanded honor and praise. The body which is 
sown deserves neither honor nor praise; the body 
which is raised will deserve and receive them both, in 
a high degree. It is not for us to say that the bodies 
given to the saints at the resurrection mil not be made 
out of celestial light, but it is safe to affirm that the 
language of Paul does not authorize us to teach that 
they will be composed of such a substance. 

Having considered the direct teaching of Christ and 
of Paul in respect to the nature of the resurrection 
body, it will be instructive to study — 



40 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(2) The indirect teaching of the New Testament as to 
the same subject — This will be found, for the most 
part, in the accounts of Christ during the forty days 
between his resurrection and his ascension. Concern- 
ing these accounts many questions are suggested — e. g., 
Do they show that his body experienced any change at 
the time of his resurrection ? Do they imply that his 
body was a perfect servant and organ of the spirit 
during the forty days? Do they prove that it was 
still corruptible and mortal, needing further change to 
fit it for endless life ? Do they intimate any process 
of spiritualization during the forty days, or any sud- 
den change at the ascension ? 

In answer to these questions, several particulars may 
be mentioned, (a) The sacred writers speak as if the 
resurrection was accomplished, not begun, on the third 
day after Christ's death. They never refer to it as a 
process going on during the forty days, or as an act 
completed at the ascension, (b) They represent Christ's 
resurrection as the first event of the kind, and as a 
pledge of the resurrection of his followers. And while 
doing this they appeal to the testimony of those who 
saw him during the forty days as proof of the resurrec- 
tion, without seeming to think that this sight of him 
needed to be complemented by seeing him ascend into 
heaven in a changed body, in order to make their 
testimony conclusive, (c) Paul appears to consider his 
sight of Jesus near Damascus equivalent to the sight 
of him by other apostles during the forty days. But 
Paul beheld Jesus in his spiritual body ; and if Christ 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 41 

did not have that body during the forty days, the 
earlier apostles and the five hundred in Galilee did 
not really see him in his resurrection body, (d) Paul 
uses the same word (&<p$7J) in describing the Lord's 
appearance to himself (see 1 Cor. 15 : 8), which he uses 
in describing his appearance to Cephas and the twelve, 
to more than five hundred at once, to James his natural 
brother, and to all the apostles. (1 Cor. 15 : 6, 7, 8.) 
Moreover, Luke makes Ananias use the same word in 
addressing Paul : " The Lord hath sent me, even 
Jesus who appeared (J 6<p#£tq) to thee in the way " 
(Acts 9 : 17). And Paul, in his defense before King 
Agrippa, declares that the Lord said unto him : " I 
am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But arise, and 
stand upon thy feet ; for to this end have I appeared 
(&(p&7)v} unto thee" (Acts 26 : 16), employing the same 
verb. Compare Acts 2:3; 7 : 2, 26, 30, 35 ; 9:17; 
13: 31; 16: 19; 26: 16; Luke 22 : 43 ; 24: 34. 
(e) The word phaneroo (<pav£p6w) y which signifies to 
" manifest one's self," is sometimes employed by the 
sacred writers to describe the appearing of Jesus Christ 
to his disciples after his resurrection. Thus in Mark 
16: 14: "And afterwards he was manifested unto 
the eleven as they sat at meat." So likewise in the 
twelfth verse : " After these things he was manifested 
in another form unto two of them as they walked," etc. 
In John 21 : 1, it is written : " After these thing Jesus 
manifested himself again to the disciples at the Sea of 
Tiberias ; and he manifested himself on this wise " ; 
and in verse fourteenth : " This is now the third time 



42 BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 

that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after that he 
was risen from the dead." Now the use of this word 
shows that for some reason Christ was commonly in- 
visible to his disciples during the forty days. He was 
seen by them only when he made himself manifest. 
And this is accounted for most naturally by supposing, 
not that he lived in voluntary concealment in order 
that none but his disciples might see him, and they 
only a few times, but that he now belonged to the in- 
visible world, and manifested himself occasionally for 
the single purpose of assuring his disciples that he had 
indeed risen from the dead. (/) The manner of 
Christ's appearing to his disciples was in many in- 
stances extraordinary and indicative of superhuman 
control over his body. Consider, e. g., his appearance 
to Mary Magdalene (John 20 : 14 f.), to the two dis- 
ciples on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24 : 13 f.), to 
the ten with these two in a closed upper room (Luke 
24 : 33 f. ; John 20 : 19 f.), to the ten with Thomas a 
week later in the same place (John 20 : 26 f.), to the 
seven at the Sea of Tiberias (John 21 : 4 f.), and to 
Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9 : 3 f.). 
In all these instances, to which may possibly be added 
the ascension, there was something not of earth in the 
manner of Jesus. An unbiased reader would con- 
clude that his body was a pliant and perfect organ of 
the spirit, becoming visible or invisible at will (see 
especially the words of Luke 24 : 31, aurbi: a<pavzos 
tyivero <Ln abrajv, a striking expression), and his use of 
it habitually different from his use of the same body 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 43 

before the crucifixion ; in a word, that it was the body 
which he took up with him into heaven, and which he 
had when Paul saw him on the way to Damascus. 

But three objections are offered to this view. First, 
" The body in which Jesus appeared to his disciples 
had ' flesh and bones ' (Luke 24 : 39), but the apostle 
affirms that l flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- 
dom of God ' " (1 Cor. 15 : 50). If only the letter of 
these passages is considered, the objection appears de- 
cisive. But if the object of the two statements is taken 
account of, the objection loses much or all of its force. 
For Jesus appeals to the fact of his having " flesh and 
bones "—that is, an actual body — for the purpose of 
showing that he was more than a disembodied spirit, 
and not, as far as can be discovered, for the purpose of 
showing that his body was in all respects unchanged. 
But Paul declares that " flesh and blood cannot inherit 
the kingdom of God," because, as he conceives them, 
and as his readers would understand their meaning, 
they signify mortal, corruptible, inglorious bodies. It 
is from this point of view only that he pronounces them 
unable to inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, 
Christ meant by the expression, " flesh and bones," a 
real, material body, as distinguished from a spirit, 
while Paul chose the expression " flesh and blood " to 
denote a frail, perishable body as distinguished from 
one that is imperishable. The words of Paul do not 
then prove that such a body as Christ professed to 
have cannot inherit life eternal. 

Second. " That the body in which Jesus appeared 



44 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

to his disciples was one that could receive food and 
drink (Luke 24 : 43), and was therefore capable of 
growth and decay, a corruptible body." The infer- 
ence is plausible, but I cannot esteem it just. For 
there is no hint of hunger or need of food on the 
part of Christ in the narrative. The sole object of 
his eating appears to have been to convince the disci- 
ples that they were not " beholding a spirit," merely, 
but their Lord, clothed again in a true body. They 
were doubtless aware at the time that his eating and 
drinking were intended to remove all their doubts of 
his real presence in the body, and so to assure them 
of his resurrection. But that these acts were intended 
to show them that he needed food or drink, that his 
body was still subject to want and decay, and there- 
fore unchanged in its relations to the spirit, is foreign 
to the aim of the narrative and well nigh incredible. 
The whole narrative makes on the mind an impression 
quite different from this. Of course, one may object 
still further that, if Jesus then had his glorified body, 
eating and drinking must have been unnatural and 
misleading, as well as unnecessary. But this objection 
assumes that the spiritual body is not a mere organ 
and servant of the spirit, adapted to whatever activity 
will best reveal the mind of the spirit. It also 
assumes that his eating and drinking, when viewed 
in the light of the other features of his appearance to 
the disciples, would cause them to think his body not 
only real, but unchanged in its relation to the spirit 
and to the life to come. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 45 

Third. " The body of Jesus during the forty days 
was the very body which was laid in Joseph's tomb, 
and it was shown to the disciples in order that they 
might thereby identify their risen Lord. Hence, it 
must have been still unchanged." We admit the 
premises of this objection, but deny the conclusion. 
In his scholarly and reverent " Life of Christ/' 
Bishop Ellicott remarks that the Saviour's body "was 
the same as before, but endowed with new powers, 
properties, and attributes ;" the same in substance and 
form, but under new conditions of organic life, and 
subject to his spiritual nature in a far more unquali- 
fied sense than before his death on the cross. With 
this view of the case we could adopt the language of 
Westcott: "A marvelous change had passed over 
him. He was the same and yet different. He was 
known only when he revealed himself. He con- 
formed to the laws of our present life, and yet he was 
not subject to them. These seeming contradictions 
were necessarily involved in the moral scope of the 
resurrection. Christ sought (if we may so speak) to 
impress on his disciples two great lessons, that he had 
raised man's body from the grave, and that he had 
glorified it." 

But it is sometimes said that the body of Christ as 
transfigured on the mount was the type of glorified 
bodies. This may be a substantially correct view, 
though unsupported by Biblical testimony. Doubt- 
less the brightness of his countenance and of his gar- 
ments at that time was suggestive of his spiritual 



46 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

nature, of his divine excellence, purity and majesty ; 
but it is by no means certain that physical light will 
be the best organ for the soul hereafter. Yet if it 
were clearly revealed, as it is not, that the glory of 
Christ's resurrection body consists of physical light 
or brightness, we might none the less believe that the 
body in which he appeared to his disciples was his 
resurrection body. For we have reason to think that 
one of the distinguishing properties of a raised body 
is its perfect subordination to spirit, adapting itself 
with inexpressible ease and swiftness to every purpose 
and wish of the latter. And the purpose for which 
Christ lingered forty days on earth did not call for 
manifestations of his glory. He wished above all to 
assure his disciples by " many infallible proofs " of 
his actual resurrection. And this could be accom- 
plished, not by permitting celestial glory to radiate 
from his face, but by subjecting his body, in a new 
and wonderful manner, to the control of spirit, thus 
showing that it was still the same, though more per- 
fectly adapted to his inner nature. If we adopt this 
hypothesis, it follows that Paul on his way to Damas- 
cus saw the veritable body of Christ, and could there- 
fore testify to his resurrection with as much confidence 
as Peter or James. It follows also that Christ's 
"body of glory" is materially identical with that 
which suffered on the cross. And it follows, lastly, 
that our future bodies, provided we are members of 
Christ, will be material, yet perfect organs of our 
souls. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 47 

§ III. Time when the resurrection takes place, — In 
this respect there are four distinguishable theories — 
namely, a) that resurrection is the immediate conse- 
quence of death ; b) that it is contemporaneous with 
death, though in case of believers who died before the 
fall of Jerusalem (a. d. 70), it was completed at that 
date ; c) that Christians will be raised at the begin- 
ning of the millennium and others at the close of that 
period, and d) that the dead, good and bad, will be 
raised at the same epoch, the second coming of Christ. 

The first and second theories resemble each other 
closely; for the advocates of both teach that the 
resurrection, regarded as the process by which human 
nature is prepared for eternal life, has always been the 
immediate consequence of physical death. They teach, 
in fact, that the souls of men are always embodied, 
that either before or when they " shuffle off this 
mortal coil " they take on the spiritual body, which is 
incorruptible and immortal. In support of this theory 
many arguments are alleged, and, as far as they de- 
pend on the word of God, they will present them- 
selves to our minds in studying that word. What, 
then, does the Scripture say as to the time of the 
resurrection? Our answer must come from a patient 
study of the New Testament. Let us then begin with 
an interesting passage, often brought forward in sup- 
port of the first or second theory. 

(1) Christ's answer to the question of certain Saddu- 
cees (see Matt. 22 : 23-33; Mark 12 : 18-27 ; Luke 
20: 27-40). — Looking at these passages one will ob- 



48 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

serve that Jesus first destroys the Sadducees' argument 
against a resurrection. Their argument assumed that 
all the relations of this life would be restored by a 
resurrection of the dead. But Jesus pronounces the 
assumption false, because in the resurrection u they 
neither marry, nor are given in marriage." We can 
almost hear him saying, " Their bodies will be very 
different from those c possessed in this life. They will 
be like angels, free from decay and death." Then, 
having destroyed their argument against a resurrection, 
he proceeds to establish the certainty of that event by 
an appeal to the word of God. " And concerning 
the dead, that they are raised, have ye not read in the 
book of Moses, at the Bush, how God spoke to him, 
saving : I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of 
the dead, but of the living" (Mark 12 : 26, B. U. 
nearly). The present tense in the expression, that they 
are raised, is best explained as stating a general fact 
or proposition, without regard to time. (Hadley, 697, 
Goodwin 205, 1, and " Tenses," § 10, Note l.j For 
not the time, but the fact of a resurrection was called 
in question by the Sadducees. This general proposi- 
tion Jesus goes on to establish, by showing that God, 
who is God of the living, not of the dead, claimed to 
be the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, long 
after their physical death. Hence their life after 
death is alleged in proof of the resurrection of the 
dead. 

But how can life after death be a proof of the res- 






BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 49 

urrection of the dead ? It may be such a proof (a) if 
there can be no life out of the body; (6) if the soul's 
continued life after death is a germ or part of resur- 
rection, or (c) if the soul's life after death is a pledge 
of resurrection. The first of these suppositions (a), 
that there can be no life without physical organism, 
has already been rejected as sheer assumption, and it is 
plainly inconsistent with many declarations of Scrip- 
ture— e. #., Matt. 27 : 50; Mark 15 : 37 ; Luke 21 : 
46 ; John 19 : 30 ; Acts 7 : 59 ; Heb. 12 : 23 ; 1 Pet. 
3: 19 ; Rev. 6:9; Eccl. 12 : 7 ; also John 2: 19, 21 ; 
11 : 39, 43, 44; Acts 9 : 37-40. The second suppo- 
sition (6), that " the soul's continued life after death is 
a germ or part of resurrection," has no support, apart 
from this saving:, in the New Testament, and is not 
suggested by either of the Greek words translated 
resurrection (dvd<rza<7is and erepeiq). But against the 
third supposition (c) that " the soul's continued life 
after death " is a prophecy and pledge of the resurrec- 
tion no objection can be raised, unless it be the omis- 
sion of one link in the argument. If Jesus had said : 
'* Know that the servants of God will be raised from 
the dead ; for they are alive after death, as tBe Scrip- 
tures prove ; and God will not suffer his own to live 
on forever imperfect/' the missing link would have 
been inserted, and we should have seen the argument 
to be perfect in form as well as in substance. Perhaps 
the Lord saw in the countenances of his hearers that 
enough had been said. " TJiis perpetuity of life after 
death tends to the resurrection" says Prof. Briggs, in 

D 



50 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

" Biblical Study," p. 312. We should prefer to say, 
" looks toward the resurrection." It follows from our 
examination of this passage that it furnishes no relia- 
ble clue to the time of the resurrection, and is improp- 
erly adduced in support of the opinion that death and 
resurrection occur at the same moment. If the view 
of our Lord's reply to the Sadducees which is here 
taken is correct, it may be added that the resurrection 
of the dead, especially of the righteous dead, is implic- 
itly taught by several passages of the Old Testament 
—e. g., by Ps. 49 : 15 ; 73 : 24, 25, and Prov. 23 : 14. 
For these passages look forward to a blessed life be- 
yond the grave. Moreover, such a view accounts for 
the use of the term resurrection in a figurative sense. 
See Isa. 26 ; 19 f. with Alexander's Notes on the same, 
and Ezek. 37: 1-14, interpreted by the remainder of 
the chapter (vs. 15-28). On the other hand, the words 
of Daniel 12 : 3 seem to speak in plain terms of the 
final resurrection of the dead, both good and bad. As 
to Job 19 : 25-27, which can only be used as an indica- 
tion of that sufferer's belief, Dr. Conant says : " The 
common interpretation is, confessedly, the natural im- 
port of the words ; and they can speak nothing less 
Avithout very considerable abatement of their proper 
force. Since there is nothing to require such abate- 
ment, we must take them in their full meaning." Thus 
understood, they show that Job anticipated in faith a 
resurrection of the dead by one whom he calls his 
Redeemer — viz., the Messiah. Yet this interpretation 
of the passage cannot be considered absolutely certain. 






BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 51 

(2) Christ's words to the Jews in Jerusalem (John 5 : 
25-29). — On the face of it this passage simply rele- 
gates the resurrection of the dead to some future 
" hour," or time, without intimating how near or how 
remote it mafy be. Yet Dr. I. P. Warren * thinks 
we may infer that Christ entered on the work of rais- 
ing men from physical death soon after his beginning 
the work of raising them from spiritual death, and, in 
justification of this conjecture, asks : "Is it likely 
that he would be solemnly invested with an official 
function which was to be in abeyance for unknown 
ages ? " We cannot affirm what is likely in such a 
case; but we have supposed that he was invested from 
eternity with this office, in the same sense that he was 
invested with the office of Redeemer, being the Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world. Besides, if 
his official function of raising those physically dead 
was in abeyance forty years — i. e., till the year 70, 
which is Dr. Warren's theory, why may it not be in 
abeyance a thousand times forty years as well ? All 
we can learn from the passage as to the date of the 
resurrection is that it was to occur at some future 
" hour," whether remote or near is wholly undecided. 

(3) Christ's words to the Jews in Capernaum (John 
6 : 39, 40, 54).— "This is the will of him that sent 
me, that of all that which he hath given me I should 
lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." 
..." This is the will of my Father, that every one 
that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him, should 

* "The Parousia of Christ," p. 242/. 



52 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last 
day." . . . " He that eateth ray flesh and drinketh 
my blood hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up 
at the last day." The resurrection spoken of in these 
verses is clearly that of the good to perfect and eter- 
nal life. And "the last day " means beyond a doubt 
the time when Christ will return in glory to judge the 
world. For, according to the testimony of Paul at 
Athens, " God hath appointed a day in which he will 
judge the world in righteousness by the man whom 
he hath ordained " (Acts 17 : 18) ; and the world of 
mankind cannot be judged as a whole until all have 
finished their period of trial. (See Thayer's Lexicon 
of the New Testament sub voce, ^pApa.} 

(4) ekrisfs words to Martha (John 11 : 24, 25).— In 
answer to Martha's confession of faith in respect to 
her brother, "I know that he will rise again -in 
the resurrection at the last day/' "Jesus said unto her, I 
am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth 
in me, though he die, yet shall he live ; and whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never, die." 
" True," says Dr. Warren, " this does not say in 
terms that her hope was too remote, but it certainly 
leaves it to be inferred. In Christ that which they 
deemed far distant was & present reality. The promise 
and potency of it was already embodied before them." 
Yes, " the promise and potency " of the resurrection 
were - present in Christ. But why was Martha re- 
minded of thi's ? Was it to assure her of a resurrec- 
tion of all mankind sooner than she expected ? Was 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 53 

it to inform her that the last day of which she had 
spoken was not remote, but was a period to begin in 
about forty years, and to continue indefinitely? Was 
it not rather to suggest to her mind an event just at 
hand, the restoration of her brother to life? In the 
sentence " I am the resurrection and the life," the 
emphasis belongs to the pronoun J, not to the verb 
am. And the significance of Christ's sublime decla- 
ration as bearing on the miracle which he was about 
to perform is neither weakened nor strengthened by 
supposing the work of raising the dead at the last day 
to begin forty years or forty centuries from that time. 
Nor can the expression u whosoever liveth and 
believeth on me shall never die " be pressed into the 
service of the second theory. For, according to that 
theory, Jesus virtually said : " Every one now living 
who believes on me shall never enter hades, but shall 
experience a complete resurrection at death, by enter- 
ing at once on his final state in heaven." Yet many 
believers in Christ, then alive, must have died before 
his providential advent at the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem, and, if so, must have passed into hades, to remain 
there twenty, thirty, or forty years, as the case might 
be. Better adhere to the old interpretation, that the 
words death and life have double meanings, the Lord 
denying that his followers would ever suffer death in 
the dreadful sense of that word when applied to sin- 
ners, death compared with which bodily dissolution, 
though called by the same name, is a shadow that flees 
away. (Comp. Matt, 10 : 39.) 



54 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(5) Christ's promise to his disciples (John 14: 3; 
17 : 24). — "And if I go and prepare a place for you, 
I am coming again, and will receive you unto myself; 
that where I am, there ye may be also." " Father 
... I will that where I am they also may be with 
me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast 
given me." This seems to imply that Christ would 
receive his disciples at death into his house on high. 
But Dr. Warren infers from it their resurrection in 
the article of death. Thus : " Christ ascended to 
heaven in his resurrection body . . . and heaven is a 
sphere adapted to the abode of such a body. How, 
then, can his people be with him, if they too are not in 
such a personal condition as to be adapted to that 
place?" To which we reply: Is not God, the 
Father, adapted to the heavenly sphere? Is not the 
Holy Spirit at home there ? Was not the pre-incar- 
nate Word adapted to that blessed world ? The 
course of reasoning employed by the author of 
Parousia in this place seems to possess no element of 
validity, and, as coming from his pen, is surprising. 

Thus the principal passages in the teaching of Jesus 
Christ which speak of the resurrection either make 
no reference to the time when it will be accomplished, 
or assign it to "the last day." And by "last day" 
must be understood the closing period of human 
history on earth. We do not discover any evidence, 
however slight, in the words of our Lord, that natural 
death is accompanied by the resurrection, that the 
spiritual body enswathes the soul while here in the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 55 

flesh, and is set free with the soul when the flesh 
loses its vitality and is cast off. But we do discover 
evidence that the last judgment is intimately con- 
nected with the resurrection of the dead. Thus, in 
Luke 14 : 14, it is said of one who invites to his table 
and feast "the poor, the maimed, the lame, the 
blind," that he " shall be recompensed in the resur- 
rection of the just" — (ei> rfj avaOTdaei rwv dcxacajv). And 
we have seen that John 5 : 28, 29 represents those 
who are in the tombs as hearing the voice of Christ, 
and coming forth, " they that have done good, to the 
resurrection of life, and they that have done ill, to 
the resurrection of judgment." If, then, the judgment 
is after death, so is the resurrection ; and the two are 
not very far apart in time. 

But what is the teaching of the apostles on this 
subject ? In answering the question, we first look at 
the words of Paul, who has spoken more at length on 
the resurrection of the dead than any other inspired 
teacher, e. g : 

(1) In his First Epistle to the Thessalonians (4 : 13- 
17). — Here it is said, among other things, that at the 
coming of Christ " the dead in Christ shall rise first : 
then we that are alive, that are left, shall together 
with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the 
Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with the 
Lord." Thus Paul, writing in the year 52 or 53, 
about twenty years after the resurrection of Christ, 
and about twenty years before the fall of Jerusalem, 
speaks of Christians that are dead, or are to die before 



56 BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 

the return of Christ in glory, as certain to rise again, 
even as their Master died and rose again. Notice the 
following particulars : That the resurrection of dying 
Christians is compared with that of Christ, that his 
resurrection involved a reunion of body and spirit 
after separation for a period, that the resurrection of 
Christians already dead is also represented as a future 
event, and that it is assigned to the time of Christ's 
second coming. Observe too that it is to be followed 
by the rapture of living believers to meet the Lord in 
the air, and to be forever with the Lord. Hence this 
teaching cannot be brought into accord with the first 
theory as to the time when the dead are raised. It 
forbids us to believe that death and resurrection are 
synchronous events — the latter being a natural result 
of the former. Nor can it be made without pressure 
to agree with the second theory- — that good men have 
always received their spiritual bodies at death, 
although such as died before the. destruction of 
Jerusalem were translated from hades to heaven at 
that time. For Jesus Christ, with whose resurrection 
that of the sleeping saints is here compared, evidently 
resumed his body on the morning of the third day ; 
and this was the essential thing in his resurrection. 

It will be noticed that Paul makes no allusion to 
unbelievers in this passage. The object of the para- 
graph leads him to speak of Christians only. These 
will belong to two classes when the Lord returns — 
that is, to the living and the dead ; and of these two 
classes the dead will be raised before the living will 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 57 

be caught up. Hence this passage furnishes no 
assistance in deciding between the third theory and 
the fourth. 

But does it not show that Paul expected the com- 
ing of Christ to raise the sleeping saints before the 
end of his own life? We think not, though many 
interpreters consider his language incompatible with 
any other hypothesis. Says Dr. Warren : " That 
Paul included himself and the Thessalonians among 
the 'living' at that time [viz., when Christ should 
come again] most commentators now admit. The 
Greek word translated - which remain' (of izeptXst-d/jLsuoi), 
says Ellicott, is simply and purely present. ... At 
the time of writing these words, St. Paul was one of 
'the living and remaining/ and as such he distin- 
guishes himself from the { sleeping/ and naturally 
identifies himself with the class to which he then 
belonged." Ellicott means the class to which he 
belonged when writing this letter, in distinction from 
the class to which he mia;ht belong when the Lord 
should return, and by saying that the word translated 
"remain" is " simply and purely present/' he nieans 
that it characterizes merely the present condition of 
those to whom it is applied, without affirming that 
this will be their condition at Christ's coming. This 
is certain also from another remark, viz. : " The de- 
duction from these words, that St. Paul himself 
expected to be then alive — as Liinemann, Koch, and 
the majority of German commentators — must fairly 
be pronounced more than doubtful" 



58 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

Nor is it very difficult to see why Paul associates 
himself in this place with those to whom he is writ- 
ing, and who belong to a class — the living as con- 
trasted with the dead — a class which would be repre- 
sented by many till the end of the seon, when the 
Lord was to appear in glory. For, first, the language 
is compressed, and, secondly, a powerful writer may 
easily go very far in identifying himself and those 
who now form a class with those who will compose it 
at a later epoch. We find no difficulty in the words 
of Jesus, " I will pray the Father, and he will give 
you another Comforter, that he may abide with you 
forever," though the pronoun " you," of the last clause, 
should doubtless be understood to embrace all believ- 
ers in Christ till the end of time — the eleven apostles 
belonging i n this case to a class that would continue 
as long as the world itself. 

(2) In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (15:51, 52), 
written probably in A. D. 57, five or six years after 
his first Epistle to the Thessalonians.— " Behold, I 
tell you a mystery : we shall not all sleep, but we 
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, at the last trump ; for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and 
we shall be changed." This language could not have 
been written by one who held the first theory, that 
death and resurrection are but two sides of the same 
event. For it makes a broad distinction between rais- 
ing the dead and changing the living, and represents 
both as future events to be accomplished at the com- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 59 

ing of Christ. Nor could it have been written by 
one who believed the second theory. For, first, the 
previous as well as the subsequent discussion relates 
to a resurrection of the bodies of Christians. Sec- 
ondly, the translation of the dead saints from hades to 
heaven is entirely foreign to the arguments of the 
chapter, and would never be suggested by it to any 
man who had not a theory to defend. Thirdly, the 
notion that the trumpet here spoken of is to sound 
continuously through an ceon which extends from the 
fall of Jerusalem to a limit that no man can fix is 
wholly foreign to the text. Fourthly, so also is the 
notion that during all this ceon the living are to be 
changed from generation to generation at the instant 
of death. Fifthly, the raising of the dead may be 
supposed to occupy as much time as the changing of 
the living; for it is said that at the sound of the last 
trumpet " the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and 
we shall be changed." Are the two processes to con- 
tinue through an ceon? The second theory asserts 
that the dead were raised — i. e., were translated from 
hades to heaven at the destruction of Jerusalem. 
Sixthly, Christians have fallen asleep, or died, in the 
ordinary sense of the expression, since the destruction 
of Jerusalem the same as before. And this is the 
death to which Paul must refer when he says, " We 
shall not all sleep." To suppose that he means to say 
"We shall not all go into hades at death" is not to 
interpret the text, but to make a new one, alien to the 
whole discussion of the chapter. 



60 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

What, then, is the natural import of the apostle's 
language in this place? It seems to be plainly this : 
that when Christ returns to put an end to the present 
order of things, the bodies of saints previously dead 
will be restored to them, incorruptible and immortal, 
while the bodies of the saints then alive will be so 
changed as to be incorruptible and immortal. The 
time of this resurrection and of this change is that of 
the return of Christ in glory. But we find nothing 
here which shows that Paul had any idea as to the 
nearness or the remoteness of that return. His use of 
the pronoun we was due to the fact that it represents 
briefly one of the two great classes into which he had 
occasion to divide Christians when he was speaking 
of the resurrection. 

(3) In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (5 : 1-8). — 
Which of the four theories does the language of this 
passage favor ? The Revised Version reads thus : 
" For we know that if the earthly house of our taber- 
nacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a 
house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. 
For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed 
upon with our habitation w r hich is from heaven ; if 
so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 
For, indeed, we that are in this tabernacle do groan, 
being burdened : not for that we would be unclothed, 
but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mor- 
tal may be swallowed up of life. Now he that 
wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto 
us the earnest of the Spirit. Being therefore always 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 61 

of good courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at 
home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for 
we walk by faith, not by sight) ; we are of good cour- 
age, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from 
the body, and to be at home with the Lord." 

This language is inconsistent with the first theory, 
according to which putting off the physical body is at 
once death and resurrection — the spiritual body being 
set free by the dissolution of the natural body, that it 
may thenceforth be the only and perfect organ of the 
soul. For the apostle expresses a strong desire to be 
" clothed upon," as if it were possible for one to re- 
ceive the spiritual body in addition to the natural, or 
without laying aside the natural. He also speaks of 
the body which he is to receive as being " in heaven " 
and " from heaven," or " from God " — a very singular 
representation if he thought of it as involved in the 
present body, or as emerging from it. Lastly, he 
says that while at home in the body he is absent from 
the Lord, but when he shall be " absent from the body " 
he will be u present with the Lord." Why does he 
thus ignore the spiritual body, if he was certain to 
have it at death ? Is it not clear that in these verses 
he speaks as if he might be with the Lord after death 
as a disembodied spirit? 

Still more inconsistent does this language appear to 
be with the second theory, according to which the 
righteous dead were possessed of their spiritual bodies, 
but in hades still, until Christ came at the destruction 
of Jerusalem and translated them to heaven. We can- 



62 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

not believe that Paul would have rendered an obscure 
doctrine yet more obscure by using the word " un- 
clothed " to describe the state of " embodied " souls in 
paradise, and the word " clothed " to describe their 
state in heaven, so that resurrection would merely sig- 
nify the translation from paradise to heaven, while 
at the same time he thought of the resurrection of 
Christ, to which that of the righteous dead would be 
similar, as already accomplished when he had left the 
tomb and had appeared to his disciples in a bodily 
form, and while the word is used in nine cases out of 
ten by the Saviour and by his apostles with reference 
to a vital reunion of soul and body. Nor can we 
think that Paul would have represented the state of 
death for believers as a being " out of the body," and 
" at home with the Lord," if he had supposed that 
righteous men receive their spiritual and eternal bodies 
at death. (Vs. 6-8.) Such ambiguous and obscure 
language is incredible in the letters of an inspired 
apostle. 

With either the third or the fourth theory concern- 
ing the time of the resurrection, the language of Paul 
in this place is compatible, and indeed equally com- 
patible. Some critics have supposed it more favorable 
to the third than to the fourth ; but they justify their 
opinion by assuming that the apostle was mistaken 
as to the time of the Lord's second coming, thinking 
it to be very near and sure to be accomplished before 
that generation should pass away. By that belief 
they account for his desire to be " clothed upon " — that 



BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 63 

is, to receive his spiritual body without dying. But 
we do not find any conclusive evidence in the writings 
of Paul that he expected the glorious appearing of 
Christ in that generation. 

(4) In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (15 : 36). — 
Here Paul illustrated the resurrection by the germi- 
nation of a dying seed. "That which thou so west is 
not quickened except* it die." Does this comparison 
show that death and resurrection are simultaneous 
events? Dr. Warren is inclined to answer, It does. 
For he writes : " The death and the quickening are in 
immediate connection. Dig up a sprouting kernel of 
corn, and see the new shoot springing up directly out 
of the old decaying seed. . . . And it is only while 
the old still remains, though decomposing, that the 
germination is possible. Sever the germ from the 
matrix, and wait till the latter w T holly disappears, and 
no power of quickening remains." This reasoning is 
however destitute of force. For Paul does not bring 
forward the analogy here used to prove that resur- 
rection takes place at death ; but to repel an objection 
to the possibility of its taking place at all. He is not 
answering the question, When are the dead raised up? 
but the question, How are they raised ? And with 
what sort of bodies do they come? And, assuming 
that the raised body cannot be strictly and simply the 
old body revived, he meets the objection by an appeal 
to events in the natural world. " The dying of the 
seed kernel is necessary in order to the germination 
and growth of the new plant. The body of the new 



64 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

plant is not of course identical in substance with that 
of the old. Besides, there are many kinds of bodies, 
says the apostle, and the resurrection bodies of Chris- 
tian men will be very unlike those which they have 
in the present life." Such is the apostle's course of 
thought, and it is illogical to apply the analogy which 
he uses to a point not alluded to by him. It is illogi- 
cal to affirm that the reproduction of grain by the 
process of germination from a decaying seed proves 
that the resurrection bodies of saints must be formed 
while their present bodies are dying. Burn a kernel 
of wheat to ashes, and the life principle perishes with 
the organism. Is the same true of the martyr's body, 
consumed at the stake, because of his love to Christ? 
If it perishes, like the seed corn from which, when 
once consumed, no blade or ear or corn can ever 
spring, then how shall the dead whose bodies are sud- 
denly destroyed be the source of new bodies, organ- 
ized at the moment of dissolution ? Besides, is there 
not a great difference between a single kernel of wheat, 
whose life produces a hundred other similar kernels, 
and the spirit of a man, re-clothed as a single person 
by the power of God for a life that never ends ? Evi- 
dently, then, we are not to push the apostle's illustra- 
tion any farther than he does ; and he has not used it 
to show that bodily resurrection takes place at the 
time of bodily death. 

There is, therefore, I am confident, no passage in 
the writings of Paul which proves either the first or 
the second theory as to the time of the resurrection, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 65 

while there are passages which connect it with the 
future coming of Christ. Some of these passages are 
the following: 1 Cor. 15: 23,24,52; 1 Thess. 4 : 
16, 17 ; 2 Thess. 1 : 7-10 ; compare John 5 : 29 ; 6 : 
40, 44 ; 11 : 24. And we are assured by them of an 
intermediate state for those who die before the second 
advent of Christ. They will live as disembodied 
spirits until that day. 

But the question still remains unanswered : Which 
of the last two theories is correct? When will Christ 
return to raise the sainted dead? Will he do this 
before the thousand vears described in Rev. 20 : 4-6, 
or only after that period? Those who believe in the 
premillennial advent of Christ teach that at his second 
coming the pious dead will be raised, the living be- 
lievers changed, and many of the w T icked destroyed. 
Yet the human race will be continued on the earth, 
still marrying and being given in marriage, until the 
thousand years are passed. On the other hand, those 
who believe in the postmillennial advent of Christ 
suppose that the present order of things will continue 
through the thousand years, though the true friends 
of Christ will have a controlling influence among men 
during that long period, and then, upon the breaking 
out of fierce opposition to the reign of Christ, he will 
return in great glory to raise the dead and judge the 
world. 

Very striking, if not decisive, arguments are 
brought from the word of God, in support of the pre- 
millennial view, and to these we are bound to give 

E 



66 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

most respectful attention. The high Christian char- 
acter and acknowledged scholarship of many who 
adopt this theory entitle it to earnest consideration y 
and, if we are unable to find it sustained by a just 
interpretation of Scripture, we cannot deny the weight 
of some things that are said in its favor, or the diffi- 
culty of presenting a theory which has no defect. In 
defense of the premillennial view, the following state- 
ments are made : 

(1) It is demanded by the meaning q/"Rev. 20 : 4-6. — 
In this paragraph it is said that the souls of certain 
martyrs and faithful Christians lived and reigned with 
Christ a thousand years ; that this is the first resur- 
rection, and that those experiencing it are rescued 
from the power of the second death. Moreover, " the 
second death " referred to is affirmed to be real or lit- 
eral, not figurative or symbolical (see ver. 14); and 
therefore, it is claimed, must " the first resurrection " 
be real, not figurative. This one consideration is re- 
garded by Alford and others as decisive of the whole 
matter. 

But the interpretation, though more obvious than 
any other, is by no means certain. For (a) no book 
of the New Testament is so uniformly symbolical as 
the Revelation (1 : 11); (6) some part of the context 
must be regarded as symbolical (vs. 1-3); (c) even 
explanations of symbols need not always be made in 
literal terms (ver. 14). Both the expressions, "second 
death " and "lake of fire" are probably figurative, 
signifying penal evil of any form; (d) the use of the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 67 

word " souls " to designate the persons partaking of 
this first resurrection is unfavorable to the view that 
a literal bodily resurrection is meant by the writer. 
(e) The mixed condition which prevails on earth dur- 
ing the millennium is against this theory. How can 
we imagine men having spiritual bodies living with 
men in natural bodies? The conditions of life for 
the two must be very unlike. (J) The solitariness of 
this passage, thus interpreted, and its palpable incon- 
sistency with 2 Thess. 1: 6-10, which represents the 
wicked as punished or destroyed at the coming of 
Christ, are objections to this interpretation. 

What, then, does it mean? Perhaps this: that 
during a long period, called a thousand years, genera- 
tions of faithful men will live and wield a controlling 
influence on the earth. With them and through them 
Christ will reign. All persecution of the saints will 
be intermitted. Those who fear the Lord will have 
under their control the dominant forces of society. 
This is "the first resurrection," the reappearance on 
earth of the holy martyrs and steadfast confessors of 
all ages, in the persons of men who possess their spirit 
and power. 

What, then, is the (implied) second resurrection? 
If it corresponds with the first, it must be pictured in 
the events of verses 7-9. And this certainly is sug- 
gested in the first clause of verse 5: " The rest of the 
dead (meaning the ungodly dead) lived not till the 
thousand years were finished" — implying that after- 
wards they did live. It will then be as if the perse- 



68 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

cutors of all ages had reappeared on earth to harass 
and destroy the saints. Both resurrections are thus 
understood to be symbolical. 

President Pepper finds two periods delineated in 
Rev. 20: 4-6 and Rev. 20: 7-9, and remarks: "The 
description of these two successive periods thus makes 
it obvious that the two resurrections are not resurrec- 
tions of individuals, personally, to their embodied life, 
but the rise of the two great parties, which together 
comprise mankind, to power and sway on the earth." 
("Baptist Review," 1880, p. 15 f.) 

Dr. Kendrick prefers a slightly different interpreta- 
tion. " Most naturally, then, does the writer designate 
this elevation of the martyrs to triumph and sovereignty 
as a living, a coming to life, and then, by a natural 
association with the event in which men shake off the 
bondage and degradation of the tomb, as a resurrection. 
No figure can be more natural than this. . . . And in 
antithesis to the literal resurrection, of which all are to 
partake, this becomes in the mind of the writer a 
* first resurrection/ a type, or rather an antetype, of the 
material and literal rising which awakes all. This ' first 
resurrection ' is the prerogative of the martyred dead ; 
of course, in their character as representatives of the 
church triumphant. . . . The dead who share this 
moral rising with Christ, who are now uplifted and 
honored with him, will in the literal resurrection awake 
to everlasting life. . . . The first death is literal and 
universal ; the second death is figurative and restricted. 
So the first resurrection is figurative and partial ; the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 69 

second resurrection, the final, and, for the wicked, only 
resurrection, is literal and universal." (" Baptist Quart. 
Review," April, 1888, p. 492.) The same view as to 
the first resurrection as figurative, and the second as 
literal, and as to the first death as literal, and the second 
as figurative, is maintained by Carpenter in " Ellicott's 
New Testament Commentary," and by Lee in the 
" Bible Commentary." 

(2.) Other passages speak of the resurrection of the 
righteous as antedating that of the wicked, and thus con- 
firm the premillennial interpretation of Rev 20 : J^-6. — 
This is true of 1 Cor. 15 : 23, 24, and of Phil. 3 : 10. 
But the confirmation afforded by these passages is 
very slight and very doubtful. For it is unnecessary 
to suppose that " resurrection from the dead " * means 
anything more than a resurrection by which those who 
share in it are forever separated from those in the 
power of death ; that is, by which they are put in pos- 
session of full and eternal life, while the " resurrection 
of the dead" f embraces that of all the dead, including 
those who are sent away into eternal punishment, which 
is the second death. This explanation perfectly ac- 
counts for Paul's language in Phil. 3 : 11, while in 
1 Cor. 15 : 23, 24, and in 1 Thess. 4 : 13-17, only the 
righteous are spoken of. John 5 : 29, as well as Acts 
24 : 15, and Rev. 20 : 13, agrees with the idea that 

* 1 Cor. 15: 12, cf. 13;- Phil. 3: 11 , 1 Pet. 1 : 3. U ve<pS>v. 

t Acts 17 : 32; 23 : 6 ; 24 : 15, 21 ; Rom. 1 : 4 ; 1 Cor. 15 : 21, 
42. Comp. "Times of Christ's Advent," pp. 28, 29. 



70 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

all the dead will be raised at the same time, or in the 
same period. 

(3.) The apostles expected the second coming of Christ 
to occur in their day, as they could not have done if 
they had looked for the millennium before that event 
(1 Cor. 15 : 51, 52 ; 1 Thess. 4 : 15, 17 ; James 5 : 7, 
8, 9 ; 1 Peter 1 : 13 ; 4 : 7 ; 5 : 1, 4 ; 1 John 2 : 18).— 
But if they expected the coming of Christ to raise the 
dead and judge the world in their own day, they were 
certainly mistaken. Nay, it is difficult to avoid the 
conclusion that Jesus himself shared their error, and 
led them into it. (See Matt. 16: 27, 28; 24: 34; 
Mark 13 : 28-31.) But a reverent student of the 
Scriptures will be likely to conclude that Jesus chose 
to associate the end of the Mosaic dispensation with the 
end of the Christian, because one event was a fitting 
type of the other. (See Broadus' Com. on the 24th 
of Matt.) Moreover, in the light of Matt. 24: 36; 
Acts 1:7; and 2 Pet. 3 : 8, 9, he will certainly doubt 
whether the apostles could have intended to teach that 
the Christian ceon would reach its end in their day. 
Some other meaning of their words will appear more 
credible. 

Yet some premillennialists state this argument for 
their view more cautiously, thus : (4) The apostles teach 
Christians to expect the second coming of Christ at any 
hour. In proof of this, they appeal to Matt. 24 : 44 ; 
Rom. 13: 11, 12; 1 Thess. 5: 1, 2; 1 Pet. 1 : 5; 2 
Pet. 3: 10; Rev. 3: 3; 16: 15. But we think it 
scarcely credible that Christ meant to teach that the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 71 

Christian age or seon might come to an end at any 
hour. (Matt. 28 : 20.) The work committed to his dis- 
ciples was one that could not be accomplished in a 
short time. AVhat, then, could have been impending 
that was equivalent practically to the second advent ? 
Is not the hour of one's death, for him, virtually the 
hour of Christ's coming to judgment? And the day 
of one's death may come at any moment, bringing him 
face to face with the Judge. For to a thoughtful 
Christian death is only a gateway into the Lord's 
court. " After death, is judgment," or, more explicitly, 
the return of Christ in glory, the resurrection of the 
dead, the transformation of the living, and the final 
separation of the righteous from the wicked. " In its 
moral and spiritual effect on us, the uncertainty of the 
time of our going to Christ is nearly identical with the 
uncertainty of the time of his coming to us" (McLaren, 
Sunday School Times, XXX, No. 23, p. 200). Says 
Godet {Sunday School Times, XXX, No. 13, p. 199) : 
"When Jesus speaks of his advent, he undoubtedly, 
first of all, thinks of the church and the world ; but 
as his return, taken in this sense, must be separated 
from the period of his earthly life by an interval of 
which no one, not even Jesus, can know the duration 
(Mark 13 : 32), it follows that the warning given to 
the apostles to watch, in the expectation of this return, 
has no meaning for them, except in so far as the idea 
of Jesus' return is individualized in some way — that is 
to say, Jesus regards the time of their death as the time 
of his return to each one of them. It is this which 



72 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

confirms the words of Jesus in John 14:3. And if 
this is true of the apostles, it applies equally to all 
succeeding generations until the actual coming of the 
Lord. The death of each believer is to him what the 
return of Jesus will be to the church as existing in the 
world at the last day. 

" We must in conformity to Biblical language, whether 
in the Old or the New Testament, represent the Lord 
as returning in the clouds immediately from the day 
of his ascension. (Matt. 26 : 64.) From the moment 
of his glorification he begins to return in the clouds. 
If one may so speak, it is the journey; and the final 
appearance will be the arrival. In this invisible 
march down the centuries he passes, putting down his 
hand, gathering one by one the ears of corn which 
grow in his field on this earth, and laying down his 
sheaves before the throne to be sorted at the last day." 

(5) Other passages of the New Testament show that 
no such period of Christian supremacy will precede the 
second coming of Christ (Matt. 13 : 25-30, 39-43 • 
2 Thess. 2: 3-10; 2 Tim. 3: 1-8, 13).— The religious 
condition of mankind, it is said, will not be generally 
and greatly improved, until Christ returns and estab- 
lishes a new order of things. The elect will indeed 
be saved ; but they will always be a feeble minority. 

But these passages must not be taken alone. There 
are others that should be studied with them — e. g., 
John 12: 24, 31, 32, 33; Matt. 13: 31, 32, 33; which 
give us another side of the picture. They show that 
the supremacy of Satan began to wane from the time 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 73 

of Christ's death. (Comp. John 16: 11.) Paul inti- 
mates very distinctly that the fullness of the Gentiles is 
to be brought in, and after that the chosen people like- 
wise. (Rom. 11 : 25.) And he says this as if it were 
all to be effected by such means as he had been using. 

It is also to be remembered that the millennium is 
referred to clearly in but a single passage, and that the 
setting of that passage affords evidence of great num- 
bers of men remaining unsaved during the thousand 
years of Christian faithfulness and prosperity. 

(6) Other passages teach that the kingdom or reign 
of Christ will not begin till his second coming (Matt. 
19: 28; Luke 19: 12 f.; Acts 1 : 6, 7).— Christ, it is 
said, is now " only seated upon the Father's throne . . 
but in the day of coming glory he is to assume his own 
sceptre, to sit upon his own throne/' etc. 

But Peter and Paul declare that Christ was invested 
with regal authority in Zion when he rose from the 
dead and sat down at the right hand of power (Acts 
2: 30-36; 13: 32, 33; Rom. 1: 3, 4; Heb. 1: 3, 4; 
Eph. 1 : 20-23; 1 Cor. 15 : 24, 25). In the last passage 
it is said very plainly that "he [Christ] must reign [as 
king, ftaettevsiv'] till he hath put all enemies under his 
feet." And there is no Biblical foundation for the 
notion that Christ's distinctive reign will ever cease to 
be mediatorial. When this reign ceases, it will be 
merged in the everlasting reign of the triune God- 
head. 

In replying to the arguments for the premillennial 
advent of Christ, some of the passages that favor his 



74 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

postmillennial advent have been cited. To obtain 
a just impression of the New Testament view of 
this subject, it would be well to study the following 
texts: Matt. 13: 40-43, 49,-50; 25: 14-30, 31-46; 
John 5: 29; 2 Thess. 1: 7-11; Kev. 20: 11-15. 
These passages refer to the second coming of Christ as 
clearly as anything in the New Testament. But how 
do they describe the work which he will then perform? 
Clearly, as a work of sifting and judgment ; as a work 
by which the wicked are separated from the just, and 
visited with final retribution. "So shall it be in the 
consummation of the age. The Son of man shall send 
forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his king- 
dom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do 
iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; 
there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then 
shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the king- 
dom of their Father." " Take ye away therefore the 
talent from him, and give it unto him that hath the 
ten talents .... and cast ye out the unprofitable 
servant into the outer darkness: there shall be the 
weeping and gnashing of teeth." " When the Son of 
man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with 
him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory : and 
before him shall be gathered all the nations : and he 
shall separate them one from another .... and these 
shall go away into eternal punishment; but the right- 
eous into eternal life." "All that are in the tombs 
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that 
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 75 

that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judgment." 
" And to you that are afflicted rest with us, at the rev- 
elation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels 
of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to 
them that know not God, and to them that obey not 
the gospel of our Lord Jesus : who shall suffer punish- 
ment, even eternal destruction from the face of the 
Lord, and from the glory of his might, when he shall 
come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled 
at in all them that believed ... in that day." "And 
I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it. 
. . . And I saw the dead, the great and the small, 
standing before the throne: and the books were 
opened." 

One seems to be doing violence to such language if 
he makes it predictive of a partial destruction of the 
wicked, if he supposes that the events described are to 
introduce a long period in which the human race will 
continue on earth as at present, though under new 
moral conditions insuring the general triumph of grace. 
For the outbreak of wickedness at the end of that pe- 
riod is proof that human nature will be the same in the 
millennium as before. According to the view in ques- 
tion, only a part of the wicked will be destroyed at the 
coming of Christ. But this, certainly, is not consistent 
with the obvious meaning of the passages quoted 
above, especially with that of 2 Thess. 1 : 7-11. If, 
then, as premillennialists assert, the sacred writers 
seem to have left no place for " the thousand years " 
previous to the coming of the Lord, it is equally clear 



76 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

that they seem to have left none for such a period in 
connection with the human race after that coming ; for 
they describe the judgment of sinners and the accept- 
ance of saints as taking place at nearly the same time. 
The one fact may be set over against the other, and it 
must be admitted that neither of them is decisive. 
Neither of them can be urged against the positive lan- 
guage of Rev. 20 : 4-6. For the sacred writers no- 
where profess to give a complete account of the whole 
course of events before and after the second advent of 
the Lord. 

But the declarations just read are not the only ones 
to be found in the New Testament which connect the 
final judgment with the second coming of Christ. A 
fair interpretation of the inspired record will require 
us to associate with them many more of kindred sig- 
nificance — e. g. y John 6 : 40, 44, 54 ; Acts 17 : 31 ; 1 
Cor. 3 : 13 ; 1 Thess. 5 : 2 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 10-13 ; and 1 
Cor. 4:5; 15 : 24-26 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 10 ; Eom. 2 : 12- 
16. For it is evident that "the last day," "a day in 
which he will judge the world," " the day," and " the 
day of the Lord," all point to the same time, the time 
when the Lord will come, " who will both bring to 
light the hidden things of darkness, and make mani- 
fest the counsels of the hearts ; and then shall each 
man have his praise from God." No one would im- 
agine when reading any of these passages that the res- 
urrection and final judgment of the ungodly were to 
be deferred yet a thousand years, that only a small 
part of the wicked on earth would be cut off at the be- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 77 

ginning of this period, while most of the race would be 
spared and converted, — the risen saints with their glor- 
ified Lord reigning over men still in the flesh for ages 
and ages till the millennium passes by.* 

While therefore I am constrained by my reading of 
Holy Scripture to believe that the theory of postmil- 
lennialists is beset with fewer difficulties than the 
theory of premillennialists, I heartily admire the en- 
thusiasm, devotion, and learning of many who belong 
to the latter class. In evangelical and missionary 
labor they have no superiors. If they attach more im- 
portance to the visible presence of Christ, or to the in- 
fluence of the raised saints, in bringing sinners to 
repentance, than I suppose is warranted by the Word 
of God, yet their belief does not interfere with a zeal- 
ous use of the truth as it is in Jesus. If their expla- 
nation of the doctrine of election seems to be ingenious 
rather than broad and natural, the doctrine itself, as 
an expression of the soveriegn grace of God, is honored 
and proclaimed. Such an article as that of Prof. Kel- 
logg on Premillennialism, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, for 
April, 1888, shows how the doctrine may be held with- 
out narrowness of vision or uncharitableness toward 
others, and increases the prospect of delightful fellow- 
ship and co-operation between those who differ from 
each other on this part of Christian doctrine. 

*See an article on "The Second Advent of Christ in the 
Creeds of Christendom," Bib. Sac. for 1867, p. 629/. "The quod 
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus must, if not absolutely 
authoritative and final, at least weigh much with all who do not 
despise authority." 



78 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

But whether premillennialists or postmillenialists are 
correct in the interpretation of the inspired Word, 
there is evidently an intermediate state for all those 
who die before the second coming of Christ, and we 
are therefore justified in searching the Scriptures for 
light in respect to the condition of human souls in 
that state. It need not occasion surprise if that light 
is comparatively dim. Prophecy can never be expected 
to rival history in clearness; and even the records of 
history are often extremely obscure. Besides, the fact 
that the middle state is transitional, and far less 
important than the final state, may account in some 
degree for the brief allusions to it in Holy Scripture. 
And if it should also appear from the intimations 
which are given by the Lord and his apostles, that it 
has no such determining influence on the everlasting 
state that follows, as the present life is known to have, 
this fact would go far to explain the meagreness of 
divine instruction concerning it. But a few rays of 
light have been cast upon this dark period of human 
existence by the Saviour of mankind, and it will cer- 
tainly be wise for us to look into it by their assistance, 
instead of trusting to our own imagination. 



CHAPTER III. 

CONDITION OF HUMAN SOULS BETWEEN DEATH AND 
RESURRECTION. 

As the previous discussion has shown, they are dis- 
embodied. That they have any connection with the 
material universe is not distinctly revealed ; all that 
can be affirmed in that respect is negative ; they have 
no vital organic connection with any part of it. But, 
notwithstanding this feature of their condition — 

§ I. Human souls are conscious in the middle state. — 
In other words, they are alive and capable of rational 
and religious action. The evidence for this seems to 
be conclusive. Of course, it is wholly Scriptural. No 
reliance is placed on the phenomena of modern spirit- 
ualism. Philosophical arguments are also passed by in 
silence, not because they are without force, but because 
they are indecisive. We turn to the Bible as the only 
source of clear instruction on this point. And in it 
are certain passages which appear to teach — 

(1) The consciousness of departed spirits in general. — 
The words of Ecclesiastes 12:7 are of this kind : 
" Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
the spirit return to God who gave it." This language 
takes us back to the account of man's creation in the 
second chapter of Genesis, and marks even more defi- 

79 



80 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

nitely than that account the different origin and des- 
tiny of body and spirit. The last clause affirms either 
the absorption of the human spirit in the Divine at 
death, or its ascent into the spiritual world, where 
God is directly known. But according to the clear 
testimony of the later Scriptures, the human spirit 
will not be absorbed by the Divine at death. It 
must therefore be ushered into the presence of God, or, 
in other words, pass into a state where God is more 
directly perceived than he is in the present life. For 
no one will say that an unconscious being or substance 
is any more with God in one part of the universe than 
in another. 

Again, Jesus declares that " God is not the God of 
the dead, but of the living " (Matt. 22 : 32), and that 
"all live to him" (Luke 20: 38). The second ex- 
pression means that all are living, are alive, in his view 
and sight. In all the stages of their existence, in this 
life, in the middle state, and in their eternal condition, 
there is no such death as the Sadducees taught, no ces- 
sation of personal existence. Says Waterland (vol. V., 
p. 667 f.) : " The Sadducees did not only reject the 
resurrection of the body, but they denied a future state ; 
they did not allow that the soul survived the body ; 
they looked upon the doctrines of a resurrection and 
a future state to be so nearly allied, or so closely 
connected with each other, that they might reasona- 
bly be conceived to stand or fall together : where- 
fore they denied both. . . . For if the soul survived 
the body, it was very natural to suppose that, some 



BIBLICAL. ESCHATOLOGY. 81 

time or other, the body would be again raised up, 
and the two reunited, to make a whole man : but 
if the soul died with the body, it was obvious to infer 
there would be no resurrection; since that would 
amount in such a case to a new creation, rather than a 
resurrection properly so called." 

(2) The consciousness of unbelievers after death. — 
Peter refers to some of this class as " the spirits in 
prison" (1 Pet. 3 : 19), and it is absurd to speak of 
unconscious spirits as being " in prison," or " under 
guard." Nothing short of an explicit declaration that 
a state of absolute unconsciousness was the prison in 
which they were guarded would justify such a view. 
And, if this had been the prison referred to, " their 
spirits would have been no more in prison than their 
bodies, or than the spirits of the most eminent saints " ; 
but neither the bodies of men, nor the spirits of saints, 
are ever said to be imprisoned after death. 

In his Second Epistle (2 : 4 f.), he teaches the same 
truth again, by reminding his readers that " if God 
spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them 
down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, 
to be reserved unto judgment . . . the Lord knoweth 
how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to 
keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the day 
of judgment." Now, it is quite evident from the Scrip- 
tures that sinning angels are conscious in their prison- 
house. They live ; but they cannot escape from the 
power that holds them in its grasp until the last day. 
And the Lord, it is said, who thus reserves the apos- 

F 



82 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

tate angels unto judgment, knows how to keep wicked 
men unto the same. It is said in warning : must it 
not mean that he does keep them thus ? 

Observe, too, that they are kept (r-qpeTv) under pun- 
ishment (xoAaZofiivow:), or " being punished," not " to 
be punished." Alford, Noyes, Davidson, the Revised 
Version, the Revised Bible (by F. W. Gotch, Benja- 
min Davies, G. A. Jacob, and S. G. Green), the Bible 
Union Version, all agree in this translation.* With 
this passage may be compared Jude, verses 6 and 7 : 
" suffering the punishment of eternal fire," although the 
interpretation of Jude's language is by no means easy. 

According to Luke 16 : 23, the prison of the ungodly 
after death is called hades. " The rich man also died 
and was buried ; and in hades he lifted up his eyes, 
being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and 
Lazarus in his bosom." Here the word hades f de- 

* If any reader should object to the use of the Second Epistle 
of Peter, because its right to a place in the Canon is question- 
able, I can only say that, after examining the objections to its 
genuineness, I am not convinced of their validity, but think 
that the reasons for believing it apostolic outweigh those alleged 
against it. Certainty is however impossible, and probability 
must be our guide. 

t The Greek word hades (<?Si?s), from a privative and ISelv, signi- 
fies the invisible. It is applied (1) to the god of the realm of the 
dead, and (2) to that realm itself. In Scripture it represents the 
Hebrew word shedl, and denotes the abode of disembodied 
spirits in general, and, in particular, the place where the wicked 
reap the fruit of their earthly life in suffering until the resurrec- 
tion at the last day, In the New Testament it appears nine 
times. (Matt. 11 : 23 ; 16 : 18 ; Luke 10 : 15 ; 16 : 23 ; Acts 2 : 27, 
31; Kev. 1: 18; 6: 8; 20: 13, 14. The highest textual authori- 
ties do not give it in Acts 2 : 24 or 1 Cor. 15 : 55.) 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 83 

notes a place of suffering, the abode of wicked 
men after death and before the judgment. For, ac- 
cording to the representation of Christ, the rich man 
had brothers still alive on earth. Of course, he is con- 
ceived to be conscious ; for he converses with Abraham 
across the " great gulf," he complains of his suffering, 
and he wishes to keep his brothers from coming to his 
place of torment. 

Nor is the testimony of Jesus materially weakened 
by supposing his words to be a parable. For (a) the 
parables of Christ never violate the course and order 
of nature. They never contain features of life foreign 
to the sphere from which the illustration is taken. It 
is safe to describe them as preeminently true to nature. 
This, is their distinguishing characteristic. (6) The 
parables of Jesus employ well-known characters, cus- 
toms, and operations, to illustrate spiritual things. 
Difficulty may sometimes be found in ascertaining 
their application to life on another plane, but in them- 
selves all is simple, coherent, intelligible, (c) The par- 
ables of Jesus are so constructed as to commend the 
lessons which they were meant to teach. But if the 
infliction of conscious misery upon the impenitent 
dead be unworthy of God, as certain critics affirm, 
then certainly our blessed Saviour in this instance 
wove his solemn parable out of imaginary events 
which misrepresent the divine government. This is 
incredible. 

So, then, his account of the rich man and Lazarus, 
whether it be a parable or not, may be said to afford 



84 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

decisive evidence of full consciousness on the part of 
the wicked in hades. 

(3) The consciousness of believers after death. — The 
language of Jesus Christ to the penitent robber first 
claims attention. (Luke 23 : 42, 43.) The prayer was 
this : " Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy 
kingdom f and the answer : " To-day shalt thou be 
with me in paradise." Whether we consider the orig- 
inal meaning of the word paradise, or its popular sig- 
nificance in the time of Christ, or its use in other places 
of the New Testament, it must be understood to de- 
note a place of extraordinary delight; it must have 
spoken to the dying malefactor of "repose, shelter, 
joy — the greatest contrast possible to the thirst and 
agony and shame of the cross." According to the 
Essenes and Pharisees it means a "region where 
there is no scorching heat, no consuming cold, where 
the soft west wind from the ocean blows forever- 
more" (Josephus, B. J. II. 8, 11). The writers of 
the New Testament employ it in one place as a 
synonym of heaven (2 Cor. 12 : 4), and in another, 
for the holy city, the new Jerusalem. (Rev. 2 : 7, com- 
pare 22 : 2.) Hence the robber was to enter at once 
after death upon a state of conscious blessedness with 
Christ. 

Again, the words of Jesus : "Father, into thy hands 
I commit my spirit " (Luke 23 : 46), point very directly 
to consciousness after death. We cannot imagine him 
speaking thus, if he expected to sink at once into a 
state of spiritual torpidity. He might in that case 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 85 

have said as well : " Father, into thy hands I commit 
my body," for this was to be as truly in the keeping 
and presence of God as his spirit. And, as far as we 
can judge, it would have been much more natural for 
him to say: "Father, into thy hands I commit 
myself." 

Besides, if he was to pass into unconsciousness at 
death, how could he say : " I have power (or right) to 
lay down my life, and I have power (or right) to take 
it again" (John 10: 17)? Can a dead body raise itself? 
Or, a dead spirit, if death affects the spirit as it does 
the body ? Should one insist on the marginal transla- 
tion of the Greek word (IzouGia) — namely, " right" — as 
more probably correct, the question must be asked, 
What sense is there in affirming the right of an uncon- 
scious spirit to act ? to take life again ? Plainly, Jesus 
conceived of himself — that is, of his spiritual nature — 
as existing personally after death as truly as before, 
and as having the right and power to resume his life 
in the flesh (^/^'). 

Study also the dying prayer of the first martyr. 
(Acts 7 : 59.) For, seeing the heaven opened, and 
the Son of man standing on the right hand of God, 
Stephen cried : " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." To 
suppose that this heroic Christian, his face radiant with 
supernatural light, and his soul strengthened to look 
into heaven itself, expected to lose all thought, memory, 
and joy the next moment, and to remain utterly uncon- 
scious for a long period, is not easy. 

With the language of Stephen and of his Lord may 



86 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

be connected the exhortation of Peter : " Wherefore 
let them that suffer according to the will of God com- 
mit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing as 
unto a faithful Creator" (1 Pet. 4 : 19) — provided, as 
I think, the word " suffer " here refers to martyrdom. 

It has already been shown that our Saviour's 
account of the rich man and Lazarus teaches the con- 
sciousness of departed spirits. In that account both 
the righteous and the wicked are brought to view as 
living, the former in happiness, the latter in woe. 
Lazarus is said to be in " Abraham's bosom," and this 
expression probably contains a reference to the Oriental 
custom of reclining at table. The poor beggar, no 
longer dependent on the crumbs of human charity, is 
represented as enjoying a celestial repast at the side of 
the father of the faithful, and even reclining upon his 
bosom. The words of Christ in this passage will natur- 
ally be compared with his words to the centurion : 
" And I say unto you that many shall come from the 
east and the west, and recline with Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven " (Matt. 
8 : 11), though it is not certain that the intermediate 
state is here intended. 

Once more, the language of Paul in 2 Cor. 5 : 6-8 
implies the conscious and blessed life of good men 
between physical death and resurrection. "Being 
therefore always of good courage, and knowing that 
whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from 
the Lord, (for we walk by faith, not by appearance) \ 
we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rathe* 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 87 

to be absent from the body, and to be at Home with 
the Lord." Is it credible that Paul was not antici- 
pating a life with Christ that would commence with 
his departure from the body ? Could he have de- 
scribed unconscious existence, or virtual non-existence, 
as being "at home with the Lord"? or have said that 
he preferred to end his present life of spiritual service 
and growth, unless he was thereby to be brought 
sooner into direct intercourse with Christ? His 
removal by death would put an end to his efforts for 
the good of the churches. Bands of Christians, look- 
ing to him for counsel, had been formed in various 
parts of the Roman Empire, and never were they in 
more need of his personal supervision than when he 
was writing this epistle. Yet, according to the theory 
of unconsciousness in the middle state, this great- 
hearted apostle w r as more than willing to leave these 
lambs which had been committed to his care by " the 
good shepherd," for the sake of seeming to be sooner 
with the Lord ; was willing to abridge his conscious 
and useful life, and to lengthen the period of his death- 
slumber, for the sake of a merely apparent good, but 
at the cost of much real loss to himself and to others ! 
The supposition is incredible. He expected, rather, to 
spend the period between his bodily death and resur- 
rection in blessed intercourse with Christ. This is the 
only view which reconciles our passage with the known 
character of the apostle, and this is the meaning which 
lie3 on the face of his language. 

But there is another passage in the letters of Paul 



88 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

which puts his feelings on this matter in yet clearer 
words — viz., Phil. 1 : 21-24 : " For to me to live is 
Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, 
if this is the fruit of my work, then what I shall choose 
I wot not. But I am in a strait betwixt the two, hav- 
ing the desire to depart and to be with Christ ; for it 
is very far better ; yet to abide in the flesh is more 
needful for your sake." This language seems to for- 
bid the thought of any sleep of the spirit after death. 
For the apostle speaks of " living in the flesh " as the 
more exact expression for the life to which he refers, 
implying that the dying which is gain was to be real- 
ized in the sphere of the flesh only, implying also that 
there is a life out of the flesh which natural death 
never reaches. Besides, it is incredible that Paul 
would have described a state of utter unconsciousness 
as "being with Christ," and most unlikely that he 
would have passed over without a sigh the long blank 
between his own death and resurrection. But if the 
latter be conceivable, can it be rationally thought that 
one who " knew the peace of God that passeth knowl- 
edge " would have preferred the total blank of uncon- 
scious existence to the mingled joy and sorrow of his 
wonderful life? That one who delighted in the honor 
of Christ, and who had such success in winning men 
to him, would have pronounced the life he was living 
worse to himself than none ? That a man who was 
pressing eagerly forward in his Christian course (Phil. 
3 : 13, 14), and gaining deeper views day by day of 
the love of God, would have represented the slumber 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 89 

of non-existence as " very much better " than this spir- 
itual growth and progress, merely because the latter 
was attended by some " light affliction " ? (See 2 Cor. 
4:17.) There are some things that stagger credulity, 
and this is one of them. " On the contrary, if we sup- 
pose that he regarded his attainment of the rewards 
and joys of heaven as simultaneous with his departure 
from life, we have then a natural explanation of his 
perplexity. He might well desire that a consumma- 
tion fraught with such gain to himself personally 
might arrive soon, and feel that nothing could recon- 
cile him to the idea of remaining longer absent from 
Christ, 'except the importance of his ministry in pre- 
paring others for the same glorious destination." 
— (Hackett.) 

To these passages may be added the representation 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews (12 : 23) that Christians 
are come even here and now, in a certain sense, to " in- 
numerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly 
and church of the first-born, who are enrolled in hea- 
ven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of 
just men made perfect," which certainly implies the 
conscious existence of these spirits previous to the last 
day ; also the representations of the Book of Revela- 
tion which, at least in symbol, describe the souls of 
men as engaged in the worship of God and the Lamb 
on high before the last day ; and the language of Jesus 
to his disciples : " Be not afraid of them that kill the 
body," etc. (Matt. 10 : 28 f.), which assumes that the 
bodies of men may be killed without harming the soul. 



90 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on 
the Mount of Transfiguration may also be noticed in 
this connection (Matt. 17:3, 4), and likewise the al- 
leged appearance of Samuel to the Witch of Endor 
(according to 1 Samuel 28: 11-19); for there is no 
Scriptural ground for supposing the disciples in error 
as to the living presence of Moses and Elijah, or for 
doubting that the popular belief of the Jews accepted 
the story of Samuel's coming up to prophesy the death 
of Saul as a real e^ent. 

From our examination of the Scriptures, therefore, 
we conclude that the spirits of the departed are con- 
scious during the period that elapses between the death 
and the resurrection of the body. 

But against this conclusion several things are con- 
fidently urged, and to these attention will now be 
given. 

(a) " The primary and literal sense of the word 'death' 
is extinction of conscious being P At any rate that must 
be its literal meaning when it is applied to a being 
whose life is conscious existence. — But this is incor- 
rect. In popular use the word " life " has many sig- 
nifications. It may be applied to any object in the 
vegetable or the animal kingdom, whether conscious 
or unconscious, from the sponge up to the highest angel, 
or God himself. Besides, its secondary or tropical 
meanings are numerous. And as the word " death" de- 
notes the negative or opposite of life, the significations 
of the one word are about as numerous as those of the 
other. If life be a symbol of good, death will be a 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 91 

symbol of evil. If life be made a synonym of energy, 
death will be equivalent to inertness. If life signify 
a normal, hopeful, blessed existence, death will signify 
an abnormal, hopeless, woeful existence. 

(b) "Adam must have understood the evil which would 
come upon him in case of transgression to be extinction 
of conscious being." — This is only a conjecture. And 
we answer it by another : that God made Adam under- 
stand that the evils, which were afterwards represented 
by the word " death," would come upon him, if he 
should eat of the forbidden fruit. No scholar has dis- 
covered the primitive language, and we may properly 
assume that Genesis summarizes all that was said in the 
fewest words possible. 

(c) " The dead are spoken of by the sacred writers as 
asleep, and persons are unconscious in 4 sleep" — The 
word "sleep" has the meaning dying or death in about 
fifty passages of the Old Testament, and in sixteen of 
the New. But the English word in some form — noun, 
verb, or participle — stands for two Hebrew and two 
Greek words. Of the Hebrew words, one appears 
upwards of forty times, and signifies primarily to lie 
down. Hence it represents the visible phenomena of 
dying, and sheds no light on the spiritual effects of it. 
The other Hebrew word, which occurs eight times, 
signifies literally to sleep, and is applied to death with- 
out doubt, because in some respects death is like sleep. 
So of the Greek words, one means to lie down, and is 
used twice of dying ; while the other means to sleep, 
and is used fourteen times with reference to dying or 



92 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

death. But sleep does not fairly suggest the idea of 
the extinction of existence in the one who sleeps. On 
the other hand, it is refreshing, recuperative, full of 
promise for the future, and gives assurance of renewed 
vigor and action. According to the Word of God, the 
spirit of man may be active in sleep. Thus " a deep 
sleep fell upon Abram " before God revealed to him 
the sojourn of his posterity in Egypt, and their subse- 
quent escape from bondage. (Gen. 15 : 12 ; compare 
28: 12-26; Daniel 10: 6-9; Job 4: 13 f . ; Num. 
24 : 4.) The sacred writers did not, then, conceive of 
sleep as putting an end for the time to personal exist- 
ence or spiritual action ; but rather as interposing a 
barrier between the soul and the world, so that objects 
of sense are but faintly perceived, or not at all. And 
this is the true view. 

(d) " Certain Biblical statement? prove the uncon- 
sciousness of the dead." — Most of these statements may 
be found in the poetry of the Old Testament — e. g., 
Eccl. 9: 10; Isa. 38: 18, 19 ; Ps. 6 : 6 ; 30 : 10 ; 
115 : 17 ; 146 : 4. But in these passages the change 
which death makes in one's relations to the present 
world is spoken of. The work of the artisan is 
arrested, the voice of the singer is hushed, the sceptre 
of the king falls. The body returns to the dust, and 
the praise of God in this world ceases forever. But 
there is one passage which seems to go further than 
this. In Ps. 88 : 10-12, we read these words (Revised 
Version) : " Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? 
Shall they that are deceased (= the shades) arise and 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 93 

praise thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be declared 
in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? 
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark ? and thy 
righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ? " Yet the 
context (read vs. 3-7, 15-17) shows that Heman 
looks upon himself as suffering the extreme dis- 
pleasure of God. If the divine wrath continues to 
burn, he can see nothing before him but the depths of 
Sheol, a home with the lost after death. From that 
dark and silent realm he imagines all interest in the 
works of God among men, and all participation in his 
praise, to be cut off. 

(e) "Biblical accounts of the last judgment imply the 
unconsciousness of human souls in the middle state" — 
For, according to these accounts (see John 5 : 29 ; 
2 Cor. 5 : 10 ; Rev. 20 : 12 f. ; Eccl. 12 : 14 ; Matt. 
7 : 22, 23 ; 25 : 37, 38, 39, 44), the decisions of the 
judgment are to be based on the conduct of men in 
this life, and are to take many of them by surprise. 

(a) " The decisions of that day will be founded on 
the conduct of men in this life. Hence this life must 
embrace the whole of their conscious existence previous 
to the last day." But this inference is by no means 
necessary : this life may rather comprise the whole 
period of their probation. For their probation is 
simply one of grace ; it affords them an opportunity 
to accept of pardon and life through Christ — to escape 
from the condemnation of the law, and come under 
the dominion of grace. And therefore when the day 
of grace ends, the life to be reviewed ends. Every 



94 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

subsequent act simply ratifies and confirms the choice 
already made. 

(6) " The decisions of that day will be surprising to 
the friends of Christ as well as to his foes. Hence 
they cannot have been alive between their death and 
resurrection ; for in such a life they would have 
learned their actual relation to Christ." Perhaps 
it would be more correct to say that the grounds 
and reasons for Christ's decision as to the right- 
eous will be a surprise to them. There is no hint 
of their expecting to be rejected, or of their fear- 
ing such an issue. Now, it is scarcely probable that 
the servants of Christ will be occupied between death 
and resurrection in reviewing their good deeds on 
earth. These will appear to them very insignificant 
and imperfect. They will see a sad want of love to 
Christ in their best action. And we may reasonably 
conjecture that the Saviour himself, and the riches of 
his grace, will absorb their minds. Time will pass 
swiftly by as they behold the glory of the Lamb ; and 
their reply to the King will be as natural after a 
thousand years of joy in paradise as it would have 
been at the hour of death. Men who grow in grace 
here, do it by forgetting those things which are behind 
and pressing towards the mark ; and so doubtless it 
will be in the middle state. 

Equally credible is the response put into the mouth 
of the wicked. They speak in character ; and even 
the representation that they have still some hope of 
being accepted is no real objection to their conscious- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 95 

ness in the middle state. Few persons are aware 
of the blind tenacity with which a selfish heart will 
cling to the hope of rescue from evil, of the cunning 
sophistries by which it deludes itself, of its power to 
call evil good, and to feed on lies. Did not Satan 
attempt to seduce Christ ? Is he not a " being whose 
reason is useless to him, because he is a slave to the 
impetuous depravity of his heart " ? — (Withington). 
And the wicked after death will be like him. Very 
likely they will believe recovery from sin at any time 
possible. Very likely they will be more skillful than 
when here on earth in making the worse appear the 
better reason. Hence the representation of Jesus in 
Matt. 7 : 22, 23 ; 25 : 44, is not inconsistent with the 
conscious existence of men after death. 

It appears, then, upon careful examination, that 
none of the objections which are urged against the 
consciousness of departed spirits are at all conclusive. 
It must therefore stand as the testimony of Holy 
Scripture that the souls of men are alive and active 
after death. 

§ II. Human souls are not on probation in the mid- 
dle state. — In other words, they do not, according to 
the teaching of Holy Scripture, have the offer of par- 
don through Christ in that state. Yet there are some 
who affirm that they must have this offer ; and at 
present the number of those who believe this seems to 
be increasing. A few years ago Dr. A. P. Peabody 
wrote as follows in his work entitled, " Christianity 
the Religion of Nature " : "I grant that if this life 



96 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

be regarded as a period of probation, and the only 
period for all men, as it is a probationary state, and 
may be the only one for the fully privileged, the con- 
dition of the unprivileged would be irreconcilable with 
the divine love. But, so far as these last are con- 
cerned, is it not reasonable to suppose this w T orld 
simply a birthplace and conservatory of spirits that 
are to be trained and matured elsewhere ? . . . They 
do not get their moral training here. They do not 
fairly make their election between good and evil. 
They know so little of moral distinctions, that the 
wrong which they seem to choose is in no sense the 
choice of the soul, and may not unfitly be regarded as 
a mere habitude of the body." Hence he concludes 
that this " earthly life is for them a brief embryo-state 
from which they emerge into a realm of light, privi- 
lege, and joy." Dr. Peabody, however, does not 
assert that the Scriptures reveal such a probation for 
the unprivileged hereafter. But what he has passed 
over in silence, other writers have attempted to show. 
In the language of Peter, of Paul, and of Jesus Christ, 
they discover traces of this fact, some of them indis- 
tinct and doubtful, but others in their opinion plain, 
warranting a belief that the gospel will be hereafter 
the power of God unto salvation to many, if not to 
all, who die in sin. It will be suitable, therefore, to 
look at the passages of God's Word, which are alleged 
in support of this view, then at the passages which 
seem to conflict with it, and finally at the more general 
considerations which bear upon the case. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 97 

I. The passages alleged in proof of a probation for 
the unprivileged after death. Of these, the clearest 
are supposed to be found in the First Epistle of Peter, 
3 : 19 ; 4 : 6; and to them careful attention will now 
be given. 

(1) The former passage (1 Pet. 3 : 19), beginning 
with verse 17 > may be translated as follows : " For it 
is better, if the will of God should will, that ye suffer 
for well-doing than for evil-doing. Because Christ 
also died for sins once, a righteous one for unrighteous, 
that he might bring us to God, being put to death in 
flesh but made alive in spirit : — in which also to the 
spirits in prison he went and preached while they were 
disobedient aforetime, when the long suffering of God 
was waiting in the days of Noah," etc. If this be a 
correct, or even probable, rendering of the passage, it 
affords no proof of probation after death. And in 
support of it, several things may be urged. 

(a) It assigns to the several Greek words their most 
obvious meaning. Thus, the word translated " flesh" 
is without the article, and therefore emphasizes the 
nature of that part of Christ which was "put to death," 
while the dative case is evidently used to show that 
the "putting to death" was confined to flesh. (Com- 
pare Winer's Gr., p. 208 f., and Eom. 4 : 20 ; 1 Cor. 
14: 20.) 

On the other hand, the "making alive" was con- 
fined to the spiritual part of Christ, which then passed 
into higher vigor and joy. In this case, too, the proper 
idea of "spirit," as contradistinguished from "flesh," 

G 



98 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

is brought out more distinctly by the omission of the 
article. The same contrast is marked by the Greek 
particles fi(v and §£. 

Naturally, then, the relative "which" (£), in the 
next clause, means simply "spirit" in contrast with 
"flesh," and not spiritual body, or Christ in his 
spiritual body, as many have supposed.* Indeed, 
Peter had already in this very Epistle spoken of 
"the Spirit of Christ" as active in prophets before 
the incarnation (1 : 11) : "Searching what (time) or 
what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in 
them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the 
sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow 
them." This striking passage suggests that the Spirit 
which revealed to Noah future events, and was in him 
during all his ministry, was the Spirit of Christ. (See 
Gen. 6 : 13 f. ; 9 : 25 f.) Observe also that there is a 
direct reference to the work of the Spirit in the days 
of Noah (Gen. 6 : 3) : "My Spirit shall not strive 
(rule, or abide) in man forever," and that this refer- 
ence may have influenced Peter's thought. It must 
not be overlooked in studying so obscure a passage. 

Moreover, this distinct and emphatic reference to 
the Spirit of Christ in our passage may have suggested 
to Peter the designation applied to the contemporaries 
of Noah, who were now, and long had been, impris- 



*See, e. g., Prof. A. C. Kendrick's article on Preaching to 
the Spirits in Prison," in the Baptist Quarterly Review, foi 
April, 1888, p. 206-7 De "Wette, Wiesinger, and Huther, de- 
fend the same view. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 99 

oned " spirits," though they were obstinate sinners on 
earth when preached to by the Spirit of Christ through 
Noah. But it is perhaps equally possible that Peter 
had been accustomed to think and to speak of the 
stubborn antediluvians as " the spirits in prison," be- 
cause of their extraordinary wickedness and doom. 
Nay, it is possible that he chose this designation, be- 
cause it brought to mind "the wages of sin," in con- 
trast with the fruits of holiness — their life being made 
lower and sadder for evil-doing, while Christ's life was 
made higher and more joyful for well-doing. 

(b) It accounts for the use of the article before 
" spirits " (ro?^ TzvzuriacTi), and for the omission of it 
before "being disobodient" (anet&rjffafrt). For if the 
apostle had in mind the contemporaries of Noah as 
the particular spirits in hades to whom preaching was 
addressed by the Spirit of Christ, we see the natural- 
ness of the article before the noun; for Peter was 
thinking of certain persons whose history was known, 
and whose disobedience was analogous to that of t bad 
men among whom the readers of his Epistle were living. 
Moreover, the circumstantial office of the participle 
forbids the use of the article with it. Says Prof. T. S. 
Green : " The absence of the article before a-ti^caa 
shows that the participle is not employed merely for 
the purpose of more fully describing the parties." He 
thinks that it marks the occasion of the preaching, and 
that its meaning maybe thus expressed: "He went 
and preached to the imprisoned spirits on their being 
once on a time disobedient; when," etc. The " Hand- 



100 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

book to the Grammar of the Greek Testament," (S. G. 
Green) remarks : " Whatever be the interpretation, the 
words must be translated, i The spirits in prison, when 
once they disobeyed/ " (P. 215.) 

But if, as many suppose, Peter had been thinking 
of Christ's alleged descent into hades after death, and 
of his preaching there to the once disobedient ante- 
diluvians, he would probably have inserted the article 
before the participle, thus : " In which also to the 
spirits in prison he went and preached, even to those 
who were disobedient aforetime when," etc. Says 
Buttmann, in his " Grammar of New Testament 
Greek," page 294 : " Participles take the place in par- 
ticular of relative clauses ; in which case the participle 
as a rule has the article before it." And certainly 
this is the case of a participle taking the place of a 
relative clause, if we suppose that it (dTzat&TJGaGt) turns 
the reader's thought back from the time of Christ's 
preaching after his death to events which took place 
thousands of years before. On this supposition, "who 
were disobedient once when," etc., is clearly the 
thought to be expressed, and to express this by a 
participle without the article would be irregular and 
certain to perplex the reader. Hence the want of the 
article before the participle is enough to render the 
current interpretation doubtful.* 

*In his discussion, already referred to, Prof. Kendrick, of 
Rochester, affirms that the omission of the article makes in favor 
of the current interpretation, rather than against it ; but I am 
unable to perceive the correctness of his statement. After care- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 101 

(c) It agrees with Peter's object in this part of his 
Epistle. That object is to encourage his readers to be 
steadfast under persecution, putting their fierce adver- 
saries to shame by a holy life and a bold assertion of 
Christian truth. Having exhorted them not to fear, but 
to sanctify Christ as Lord in their hearts, he appeals, first, 
to the Saviour's great example, who himself suffered 
bodily death, but rose thereby to higher spiritual life ; 
and, secondly, to his example of preaching in spirit 
through Noah a hundred and twenty years to a race of 
disobedient men whose spirits were now in prison, while 
Noah and his family were saved. As with Christ 
himself, and with his ancient prophet who was ruled 
by his Spirit, so will it be, Peter suggests, with his 
servants who now suffer for well-doing. There may 
be bodily death, but a higher life is certain. Thus 
explained, the apostle's course of thought is natural 
and impressive, though condensed, almost to obscurity. 
The suffering of Christ in flesh and his preaching in 
spirit were both in circumstances strikingly similar to 
those in which the readers were evidently placed, and 
his example must therefore have been the strongest 
motive to fidelity on their part. But this interpreta- 

fully weighing his reasons for such a view, I must abide by my 
previous judgment, that the omission of the article, though not 
decisive against the interpretation which supposes that the 
preaching here spoken of was in hades after Christ's death, is 
much less favorable to that interpretation than the insertion of 
it would have been. If that was Peter's thought, the omission 
of the article occasions surprise; if the other was his thought, 
the omission of it seems natural, and perhaps necessary. 



102 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

tion assumes that Christ himself may be said to do in 
spirit what he does through another moved by his 
spirit, and to feel as his own the self-denial and suffer- 
ing of his servants. This, however, is an assumption 
which no one need hesitate to make (compare Matt. 
10:40; 25 : 35 ; John 15: 5; 17 : 23; 1 Cor. 12: 12, 
and Acts 7 : 51, 52), and which would greatly encour- 
age the readers. 

According to the other interpretation, Peter brings 
forward the well-known example of Christ, who suf- 
fered death as to his flesh, but was made alive as to 
his spirit, and then his otherwise unknown example 
of going and preaching to certain souls in hades, with 
no hint of results, but with a statement that thousands 
of years before those souls had been disobedient while 
the ark was preparing in which Noah and his family 
were saved through the water. Surely, this is a 
relatively inapposite and confused illustration of the 
fidelity which Peter was urging upon his readers. The 
example is that of Christ after his death, but the per- 
sons chiefly described are Noah and his disobedient 
contemporaries. 

(d) It accords with other representations of Scrip- 
ture. For, in 2 Pet. 2 : 5, Noah is called a " preacher 

of righteousness " (dtxatoffuvTjq %7Jpuxa } cf. txypui-ev), and 

in Heb. 11 : 7 it is written that, "by faith [Noah] being 
warned (of God) concerning things not seen as yet, 
moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to the saving 
of his house ; through which he condemned the world, 
and became heir of the righteousness which is accord- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 103 

ing to faith." The building of the ark was a con- 
tinual sermon, from month to month and year to year, 
by which the Spirit of God appealed to a sinful gener- 
ation. Moreover, the substance of Noah's message 
from God to the world was well known. It was a 
message of righteousness, denouncing sin and threaten- 
ing ruin. The story of the deluge, the ark, the pres- 
ervation of Noah, and the destruction of mankind, 
must have been familiar to the early Christians. To 
say that Noah, moved by the Spirit of Christ, preached 
to the people, was enough, at least so far as the nature 
of his message was concerned. 

(e) Still further, this interpretation shows how the 
preaching was received ; for the participle (axuti-qGain} 
is introduced for this very purpose, at least in part, 
and the testimony which it bears agrees with the Old 
Testament narrative. But with the other interpreta- 
tion we have no certain knowledge of the character of 
the message delivered, or of the way in which it was 
received. For " righteousness " and "judgment to 
come " may be announced by a " herald " (xyput) with 
just as much fitness as a grace." 

This passage, then, as far as we are able to judge, 
aifords no evidence of the offer of pardon to ungodly 
men after death. But, owing to its supposed import- 
ance, it may be well to review Prof. Wiesinger^s 
objections to our interpretation of the participle 

(aTZ£L#ri<ja.(ji\ 

(a) " The New Testament affords no certain exam- 
ple of a participle used to express an act consequent 



104 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

on the one expressed by the verb." But, we reply, no 
one is obliged to assume that Peter conceived of the 
disobedience as consequent on the preaching. It 
existed in the lives of the antediluvians before the 
preaching, and continued to manifest its ungodly power 
in spite of the preaching. Yet there is some ground 
for calling in question the correctness of Wiesinger's 
view of New Testament Greek usage. (See Matt. 8 : 
27; 9: 35; 21: 10; 26 : 8 ; Col. 3 : 16.) In the 
first place here cited, it is said : " And the men mar- 
velled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even 
the winds and the sea obey him ? " Was not their 
saying this a consequence of their wonder, as well as 
an expression of it ? And in the last passage : " Let 
the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom ; 
teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your 
hearts unto the Lord," are not the teaching, the admon- 
ishing, and the singing conceived of as consequent upon 
the dwelling of the word of Christ in their hearts ? 

(b) " That if the participle had been meant to express 
protracted action, contemporaneous with that of the 
verb, it would have been in the imperfect, not in the 
aorist tense." This would indeed have been true if 
the participle had been used to depict the manner in 
which the action of the verb was accomplished, as in 
1 Pet. 3 : 6, and 5:12. But here it is supposed to 
mention an attendant circumstance, and the reason 
for the rule does not make it applicable. For aorist 
participles, denoting acts contemporaneous with those 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 105 

expressed by verbs in the aorist, see Col. 2: 13-15, 
with Ellicott's notes. In his comments on verse 13, 
Prof. Boise says : " The aorist, both in the indicative 
and in the participle (^aptadfitvo^ denotes an accom- 
plished fact. Whether the one preceded the other, or 
whether the two were synchronous, is not determined 
grammatically." Again, on the participle tzafcfyag, 
ver. 14, he remarks: "The act here described is re- 
garded as synchronous with that of %ap«jdtiv;o<- by 
Alford, Ellicott, Braune : as antecedent to it by Meyer 
and Riddle. The aorist participle may be viewed 
either way. ... It denotes in itself simply an accom- 
plished fact, and that is enough for us to know ! That 
is all probably which the writer had in mind." See 
also Matt. 23 : 22, and Dr. Broadus' note on the use 
of aorist participles, etc., in the margin. He affirms 
that they refer to something more or less closely con- 
nected with the action of the verb and contempora- 
neous with it ; but there is no attempt to represent 
that accompanying circumstance or act as continued, 
repeated, or customary.* And so it is here. The act 

* The substance of Dr. Broadus' note is as follows. "It [the 
aorist participle] presents the simple notion of the action with* 
out any such idea of continuance or repetition or custom as the 
present participle would give. In general, the aorist tense 
('second aorist') is the original root of the verb, presenting the 
unmodified action. As various tense forms were devised, the 
present system, the perfect system, etc., to express particular 
modifications, the aorist Continued to be used whenever no one 
of these others was distinctly wanted. This history appears to 
explain the use of the aorist in the subjunctive, optative, imper- 
ative, infinitive, and participle ; the aorist is in all these employed 



106 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

of disobedience is presented just as simply and boldly 
as the act of preaching. With both it is assumed that 
the readers are familiar. Only on the deliverance of 
Noah, the "preacher of righteousness," does Peter 
linger in words descriptive of his preservation. 

(c) " That the position of the participle between the 
verb ' preached y and the adverb ■ once y or l aforetime ' 
forbids one to refer the adverb to the verb." Yet this 
point is not urged with confidence. And according to 
the interpretation which we give the adverb really 
modifies the participles as well as the verb : the going, 
the preaching, and the disobeying were all events of a 
former time, " When the long suffering of God waited 
in the days of Noah," etc. Moreover, it is difficult to 
see where else the participle could have been placed, if 
the apostle wished to describe the contemporaries of 
Noah as disobedient to the preaching as well as before 
the preaching. 

Look at the passage once more. If the participle 
be omitted, it reads as follows : " In which also to the 
spirits in prison he went and preached aforetime when 
the long suffering of God waited," etc. In this form 
it evidently places the preaching in question before the 
flood. Insert the participle and it reads : " In which 
also to the spirits in prison he went and preached, 

as a matter of course, unless the distinctive sense of the present 
or perfect tense be specially desired because the aorist is the 
original verb. When the so-called 'first aorist' form was subse- 
quently invented, it came to be used in the same sense as the old 
aorist. Apparent exceptions to this theory of the aorist are 
believed to be only apparent." 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 107 

they being disobedient, aforetime when the long suf- 
fering of God waited," etc. Is there any reason why 
the adverb " aforetime " must be referred to the near- 
est participle only, and not to the preceding participle 
and verb also ? All are in the aorist tense, and the 
last participle can easily be read as slightly parenthetic, 
or at least as comparatively unemphatic, mentioning a 
circumstance that would have suggested itself to the 
mind without being named, and which only needed to 
be hinted in passing. (See Baptist Quarterly, 1870, 
p. 486 f. ; also Bib. Sac. 1875, p. 401 f. Prof. Henry 
Cowles; New Englander, 1872, p. 601 f. Pres. S. C. 
Bartlett; Baptist Quarterly Review, 1888, p. 205. 
Prof. A. C. Kendrick; Commentary on the First 
Epistle of Peter, by Robert Johnstone, p. 243-283— 
an exceedingly fair and exhaustive interpretation.) 

(2) But while this is the principal, it is not the only 
passage relied upon. 1 Pet. 4 : 6 is also alleged in 
proof of a probation after death. " For to this end 
was the good news preached also to those who are 
dead, that they might indeed be judged according to 
men in flesh, but live according to God in spirit." It 
will be seen at once that the end contemplated by God 
in the preaching here spoken of was twofold — namely, 
that persons now dead might indeed suffer for right- 
eousness' sake in body, a single act expressed by the 
aorist subjunctive, but live continuously in spirit, this 
being expressed by the present subjunctive. " Accord- 
ing to men " means after the manner of men's judging, 
or of men's being judged, and " according to God " 



108 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

means " after the manner of God's living, or of God's 
giving life." The choice between these explanations 
will depend on the interpretation given to the pas- 
sage as a whole." The word which is translated 
"the good news was preached" {ewyeXiGftrj) is in 
the aorist tense, and carries the mind back to a period 
anterior to the ends contemplated by the action ; for 
if the good news was preached to certain persons in 
order that they might be judged in flesh, but live in 
spirit, it was preached before the judging and the liv- 
ing referred to. But it is evident that the words 
" might be judged according to men in flesh " refer to 
physical death, whether by martyrdom or by the com- 
mon order of nature, and therefore the preaching must 
have been to dead persons in their earthly life ; and 
the translation of vezpeU. by the phrase " to those who 
are dead " is true to the meaning. 

That the interpretation which supposes the good 
news to have been preached to souls after death sets 
aside the natural construction of the sentence is partly 
admitted by some of its advocates. Thus Mason, in 
Ellieott's New Testament Commentary for English 
Readers, says : " It is next to be considered what 
date we are to fix for this judgment of the flesh. 
Was it previous to Christ's preaching the gospel to 
them in hell, or was it to be subsequent ? Taking the 
former line, we should be able to paraphrase, i His 
object was, that though in flesh they had been judicially 
destroyed by the flood, they yet might live hereafter 
in spirit.' But, besides other difficulties, it is far 



BIBLTCAL ESCHATOLOGY. 109 

more than doubtful whether it is Greek to infuse a 
past tense into the subjunctive mood here used — i. e., 
to render this, l it was preached in order that they 
might have been judged/ Had we the words by them- 
selves, and no preconceived theology to hinder us, we 
should undoubtedly translate, - to this end was the 
gospel preached to dead men too — viz., in order that 
they may be judged according to men so far as they 
are flesh, but may live according to God so far as they 
are spirit/ This is evidently correct, except that 
might should be substituted for may. But rather than 
give up the notion of preaching to dead men in hell, 
this interpreter proposes the view that those wicked 
souls, though brought to repentance after death by 
the preaching of Christ, will not share in the resurrec- 
tion of the body, but - live a divine life in the spirit 
only/ and that this forfeiture of the resurrection of the 
body is meant by the clause, 'that they might be 
judged according to men in flesh/ " 

Again, Canon Cook, in the "Bible Commentary," 
speaks thus of the clause "that they might indeed be 
judged," etc. : u The construction presents some diffi- 
culty, increased in our version by the omission of the 
word indeed. The Greek makes a distinction [?] be- 
tween the two propositions ; the former does not apply 
to the effect of the tidings, but to the condition of those 
addressed ; they were to learn that they had, as a 
natural law, to undergo death, the wages of their sin ; 
the next proposition, but live, tells us what was the 
ultimate and perfect effect upon those who were pre- 



110 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

pared to receive it. ... . The literal rendering is 
that they may be judged; but the term is evidently 
used with reference to their previous state, not to the 
time of the announcement." I do not find that 
Canon Cook, or any other interpreter, has brought 
forward a single New Testament passage in support 
of this treatment of the two clauses dependent on that 
( r ^a); and it seems to me plainly unsafe to adopt an 
interpretation which necessitates this treatment. 

But with what does for (jvp) connect this verse? 
What statement does the apostle justify by this 
verse ? Not the statement of the previous verse, as 
if the preaching of the gospel to some of the dead 
were necessary before Christ could properly "judge 
the living and the dead."* For, first, no such condi- 
tion is referred to elsewhere in the New Testament : 
Christ is to punish those " who know not God/* as 
as well as those u who obey not the gospel " (2 Thess. 
1:8); secondly, it would have been just as necessary, 
if that were the meaning, to specify the preaching of 
the gospel to the living as to the dead, at least to all 

* Which is the view of Oertel (see "Hades," p. 120 f), who 
says that, according to Peter, " the design of God in this preach- 
ing of the gospel to the dead is to subject them with the living 
to the judgment mentioned in verse 5, a judgment to which 
the3 r would have had some excuse for objecting, because of their 
ignorance, if they had not heard the gospel" (Acts 3: 17; John 
9: 41; 15: 24; 1 Tim. 1: 13). In further explaining his view, 
Oertel says that "flesh" does not here denote the body in con- 
trast with the spirit, as it does in 3: 19, but the sinful nature of 
man — an interpretation which seems to disregard the obvious 
meaning of the contrasted term spirit. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. Ill 

who should be alive at the second coming of Christ ; 
and, thirdly, the preaching is here made an antecedent 
and condition, not of the final judgment, but of being 
"judged according to men in flesh, and of living ac- 
cording to God in spirit." For what, then, does the 
'sixth verse assign a reason ? Perhaps a literal trans- 
lation of this paragraph may be helpful to the reader 
in answering this question. "Since therefore Christ 
suffered in flesh, arm yourselves also with the same 
thought (or mind); because he that has suffered has 
ceased from sin; that ye may no longer live the 
remaining time in the flesh unto [or, according to] 
men's lusts, but unto [or, according to] God's will. 
For the time past is sufficient to have wrought the 
will of the Gentiles, while ye have walked in wanton 
manners, lusts, wine-bibbings, revelings, carous- 
ings, and abominable idolatries ; wherein they 
think it strange that ve run not with them to 
the same excess of riot, blaspheming; who shall 
give account to him that is ready to judge living 
and dead. For to this end was the good news 
preached to persons who are dead, that they might 
indeed be judged according to men in flesh, but live ac- 
cording to God in spirit." The ruling idea of all this 
paragraph is Peter's exhortation to a brave and holy 
life, in view of Christ's example, and of the spiritual 
life that would follow death in their case as well as in 
his; and the latter reason is formally stated in the 
sixth verse. It is possible that Peter, having referred 
to the impending judgment in the last clause of the 



J 12 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

fifth verse, makes that event his mental standpoint in 
the sixth verse (this is Huther's view), and looking back 
to this life, says that the gospel was preached to some of 
the dead, considered as a class, in order that they might 
indeed be judged after the manner of men in body, but 
live after the manner of God in spirit — both these 
things being embraced in God's plan of saving them. 
But it is not necessary to suppose that Peter's 
standpoint in this verse was the day of judgment. 
He may have used the same language with refer- 
ence to the righteous dead in his own time. And 
this reference to them would have been specially 
pertinent if, as we suppose, they had suffered martyr- 
dom because of their fidelity to Christ. For Peter 
was just the apostle to look upon that martyrdom as 
a part of God's gracious plan for their salvation, even 
as he looked upon the Saviour's death by the hand of 
Roman soldiers as embraced in " the determinate 
counsel and foreknowledge of God " (Acts 2 : 23). 
Moreover, he was probably anticipating martyrdom 
as involved in God's plan of his own life. (John 21: 
19; 2 Pet. 1: 14.) To him the Saviour had prom- 
ised a crown of life, but in reaching forth his hand to 
take that crown the hand would be nailed to the 
cross. He must suffer with Christ in order to reign 
with him. (Compare 1 Pet. 4 : 12, 13 ; 5 : 1.) It 
was, therefore, easy for Peter to grasp the thought 
that, "the good news" had been preached to such 
Christians as had already suffered death for the Name, 
" in order that they might be judged indeed accord- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 1 13 

ing to men in flesh, but live according to God in 
spirit." 

On the whole, then, this passage furnishes no trust- 
worthy evidence of probation after death. The 
preaching here referred to belongs to the present life 
rather than to the intermediate state. 

(3) Turning next to the writings of Paul, we find 
an expression in Eph. 4 : 8, 9, which is supposed by 
some to imply the conversion of souls in hades. For 
having quoted the words of the Psalmist, " When he 
ascended up on high he led captivity captive and gave 
gifts unto, men" (68: 18), he adds: "Now that he 
ascended, what is it but that he also descended into 
the lower parts of the earth ? " It is claimed that 
f the lower parts of the earth " (rd xarmrepa rfc rfc) 
means hades, or the underworld. But this is uncer- 
tain. Ellicott, who inclines to this view, admits that 
" it is extremely difficult to decide " between it and the 
one which takes the lower parts of the earth to mean 
the earth itself in contrast with heaven. For the 
Greek genitive {rrjq yr^q) may be either possessive or 
appositive. The "Bible Commentary" says that 
"the lower parts of the earth means simply (as in 
Isa. 44 : 23) the lower earth, so called in contrast with 
the heaven above." Weiss (Bib. Theol. of the New 
Testament, Vol. II., Note 3) remarks, " that he de- 
scended into (or unto) the lower parts of the earth 
cannot refer to the descent of Christ to hell .... but 
to the descent to the earth, which is designated the 
lower region in opposition to the 'on high' — eig ucpog 

H 



114 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

— of the Psalm." Eadie gives three reasons for this 
interpretation. (1) It agrees with the idea of the 
Psalm-passage far better than the other. (2) The 
descent is opposed to the ascent from earth to heaven. 
(3) This is the opposition often expressed in other 
places— e. g., John 3 : 13 ; 6 : 38 ; 8 : 23; 16 : 28; 
compare Acts 2:19. 

But even if "the lower parts of the earth" be 
hades, it is not here asserted that Christ led his cap- 
tives out of that realm. His descent into hades may 
have been necessary to his complete experience of 
death, and, in a sense, prerequisite to his victory over 
evil in the hearts of men. Besides, his words to the 
penitent robber on the cross, " To-day, shalt thou be 
with me in paradise," suggest the luminous side of 
hades, the blessed region where Lazarus rests in the 
bosom of Abraham, as the place into which they 
passed at the hour of death. The Unseen is not then 
peopled everywhere with those who die without hope. 
The good are there also, and "they rest from their 
labors." And to them, it would seem from the record 
of Luke, the Saviour purposed to go at death. Did 
he lead captives from paradise ? Where else are the 
dwellers in paradise called captives ? 

(4) Again, it is claimed that the ultimate restoration 
of all the wicked is taught by the same apostle in his 
Epistle to the Philippians. (2 : 9-11 ; cf. Isa. 45 : 23, 
24 ; Rom. 14 : 9-12.) But the words, " That in the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven and things on earth and things under the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 115 

earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father/' seem 
to have been borrowed in part from Isa. 45 : 23, 24, 
and to have been used by Paul in Rom. 14: 9-12, as 
applicable to the final judgment. The homage there- 
fore, however universal and honorable to Jesus Christ 
and to God the Father, will not in all cases be an 
expression of love. All will bow, either with praise or 
fear ; but that all will bow with joy is not affirmed. 

(5) Substantially the same may be said as to the 
import of the next passage, 1 Cor. 15 : 24-28. The 
nature of the subjection of all things to Christ is not 
closely defined. Paul lays hold of a single great 
thought, and sets it forth in solemn undefined majesty. 
The mediatorial supremacy of Christ, the Son of God, 
will be made universal, the power of every foe being 
brought to nought, and then this special supremacy 
will be resigned, to the end that God, without official 
distinctions of person, may reign forever. The passage 
must be interpreted in the light of the eighth Psalm 
and of the second chapter of Hebrews, 5-10. (See 
also Matt. 17 : 11 ; Acts 3 : 19-21 ; Rev. 5 : 13.) 

(6) But the language of Paul in Col. 1 : 19, 20 
(comp. Eph. 1 : 10) is perhaps still more remarkable. 
Two constructions are possible, viz. : " For the whole 
Fulness (i. e., of the Godhead) was pleased to dwell 
in him, and through him to reconcile all things unto 
himself," etc., or, " For he (i. e., God the Father) was 
pleased that in him should all the Fulness dwell," 
etc. ; but in either case the phrase " to reconcile all 



116 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

things unto himself" must have essentially the same 
force. What is that force ? Does it mean universal 
salvation ? If this were the only passage in the New 
Testament referring to the subject, or if there were no 
passages in that volume inconsistent with the doctrine 
of universal salvation, we should perhaps think that 
Paul teaches it here. But as the case actually stands 
we must seek another interpretation. 

Notice then (a) that " all things " (rd. ndvra) signifies 
all things collectively, not severally. If there be any 
separation of the totality of things here meant, it is 
only into " those on the earth" and " those in the 
heavens." But interpreters differ in opinion as to how 
much was meant to be embraced in this totality, 
whether all created beings and things, or all rational 
beings, except the incorrigibly wicked, or all those to 
be redeemed from the sinful race of mankind. They 
only agree that whatever is meant by the complex 
whole of beings, here expressed by " all things," is to 
be reconciled to God through Christ. 

Notice (6) that the word translated " to reconcile " 
(anozaTaXAdgat), if interpreted morally and strictly, for- 
bids us to suppose that "-all things," whether "those 
on the earth " or " those in the heavens," can embrace 
inanimate objects, or irrational beings, or angels that 
never sinned ; for none of these have ever been unrec- 
onciled to God. Lightfoot, indeed, says that this verb, 
and the similar one, " to sum up" (avazecpaXaiwGats'&ai} in 
Eph. 1 : 10, simply implies " a restitution to a state from 
which they had fallen, or which was potentially theirs, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 117 

or for which they were destined " ; and hence may be 
predicated of holy angels and of irrational beings. But 
his definition reads as if it were formed on his idea of 
what is here embraced in all things (rd iz&za). 

Weiss, Meyer, and Boise, suppose that evil angela 
and wicked men are to be excluded from the heavens 
and earth when the work of Christ is finished. (2 Pet. 
3: 13; Rev. 21 : 1, 8 ; 19 : 20 ; 20 : 10.) Accord- 
ingly heaven and earth do not here signify the whole 
universe, but rather those portions of it in which the 
unfallen and the redeemed have their home with 
Christ and God. 

We offer therefore two further remarks on this 
passage, viz. : (a) If the words " all things " (rd r.dvra) 
be taken in their largest sense, the word " reconcile " 
(dnoxaTaMdSat) must also be taken in a large sense, not 
implying any moral change, but merely a restoration 
of general harmony of some kind through Christ. In 
this case it would be enough that evil spirits and 
wicked men should be deprived of any power to mar 
the absolute dominion of Christ. But it would be 
necessary to suppose that unfallen spirits, irrational 
creatures, and inanimate objects are said to be recon- 
ciled merely because they are given their proper place 
in the restored cosmos. . This is not very satisfactory. 

(6) If the word "reconcile" implies a moral 
change from alienation to love, or from condemnation 
to acceptance — a change of standing before God — the 
words " all things " must be restricted in some way, 
and we need not hesitate to exclude from their mean- 



118 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

ing, on the one hand, all beings that have not sinned, 
or that cannot sin ; and, on the other hand, all beings 
that are represented elsewhere in the New Testament 
as lost. For even these will be no disturbing element 
in the universe. If they are numerous enough to be 
an appreciable part of the vast and well-ordered 
whole, they will in some degree manifest the glory of 
God. Instead of proving the weakness of the divine 
character and law they will be so treated and controlled 
as to demonstrate the purity and strength of both. 

This view of the apostle's meaning accords with 
the next clause, " having made peace " — or, " by 
making peace " — "through the blood of his cross," 
and with such passages as Phil. 2 : 10; Heb. 2 : 8 f. ; 
1 Cor. 15 : 27-29 ; John 12 : 12 f. ; Eev. 5:13; Acts 
3: 21. (Comp. Matt. 17: 11 and 1 John 2: 20, 
where, however, ndvTa is used without the article.) 

The note of Prof. Boise is worthy of being tran- 
scribed in full. "What, then, does this emphatic 
declaration of reconciliation signify ? The least, and 
in fact the only safe answer, is found in the exact 
signification of the word d-oxaraXMz-ou, from dMd<r<rw y 
to effect a change, xard, intensive, and and denoting 
departure from something. Without Christ, there 
was no access to God for the sinner, even if he 
had desired it. Christ effected a change (dMdgat); 
he effected it completely (xand); a change from a 
former state, or relation, to a new one (and). By this 
change, a way of access to God, a righteous God, was 
opened up to the sinner. . . . This is what the verse 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 119 

before us asserts in relation to ourselves. But it may 
be said, we know that a large part of the world 
around us, and we are also assured that the powers 
of darkness, are not actually reconciled to God. 
How, then, are we to understand the entire state- 
ment? Simply as proleptic. (Cf. Eph. 2:6; Rom. 
8 : 30. Winer § 40, 5, 2, p. 278.) That which is 
here spoken of as an accomplished fact has only 
begun to be realized, is already fully assured, and 
will be seen in its entire fulfillment when the new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, shall appear 
(2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21 : 1); when the unbelieving 
and abominable shall have been cast out from the 
new heavens and the new earth, and shall have their 
part in the lake that burneth with fire and brim- 
stone. (Rev. 21 : 8.) 

(7) Finally, there is one expression of Jesus Christ 
himself which is said to establish the fact of probation 
after death. For in Matt. 12: 31, 32 he is repre- 
sented as saying : " Every sin and blasphemy shall be 
forgiven unto men ; but the blasphemy against the 
Spirit shall not be forgiven . . . Whosoever shall 
speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven 
him, neither in this age (aeon) nor in that which is to 
come " ; and it is inferred from the last clause that 
some sins, not forgiven in this ceon, will be forgiven 
in the ceon to come. Nay, it is claimed that, accord- 
ing to this passage, all sins, save that against the Holy 
Spirit, will be forgiven either in this age or in that 
which is about to be. Yet those who make this 



120 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

claim admit that " the future verb may denote what 
is barely possible, as well as what is certain "; and 
without doubt this is a case in which possibility only 
is affirmed — i. e., every other sin may be forgiven, and 
indeed w T ill be upon repentance. In other words, the 
usual conditions of forgiveness are presupposed, and 
only in case they are fulfilled will any sin be par- 
doned. Moreover, it is by no means certain that 
Christ had auy reference to the future life in distinc- 
tion from the present. For Mark gives the declara- 
tion of Jesus as follows : " Whosoever shall blaspheme 
against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is 
guilty of an eternal sin " (Mark 3 : 29). And the 
phrase translated "never" — (sis rdv.at&va) — is frequent 
in the New Testament, meaning uniformly " never." 
If so peculiar a thought as the one supposed to be 
contained in the language recorded bv Matthew was 
uttered by Christ, it is -surprising that Mark came 
so near repeating it, and yet failed. It is far more 
probable that the words ascribed to Christ by Matthew 
are merely equivalent to an emphatic never. This 
also is Dr. Broadus' opinion. But if it be admitted 
that two periods are intended by "this age " and 
"that which is to come," what is the probable mean- 
ing? "The Jews constantly spoke of ' this period/ 
and ' the coming period ■ as separated by the coming 
of the Messiah. In the New Testament i the period 
to come ' is usually conceived of as following the 
second coming of the Lord " (Broadus). AVeiss there- 
fore says : " Neither in this world-period — i. e. y in the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 121 

time up to the second coming, nor in the future world- 
period, which begins with the judgment ; and as the 
judgment decides the eternal destiny of men, there 
can never in that following period be forgiveness of 
the sin which at the judgment was established and 
subjected to punishment." Meyer remarks that 
Schmid (Bibl. Theol., N. T., I., p. 358) "is wholly 
wrong in thinking of the time between death and the 
judgment, a time which does not even belong to the 
i age to come } (alwv fiiUcov)" 

But it is quite possible that Jesus, addressing Jews, 
used the the two expressions, "'this aeon," and "that 
about to come," as the Jews sometimes used them — i.e., 
of the Mosaic period and the Messianic period, respec- 
tively, in neither of which should the sin against the 
Holy Spirit be forgiven. For up to this time he bad 
said very little, if anything, in respect to his second 
coming. My own opinion then is, that he employed 
the phrase as an emphatic never; but that, if he 
meant to distinguish two periods at all, he made use 
of current Jewish phraseology in the sense given it by 
the Pharisees and Scribes. 

The result of our study thus far is plain, viz.: that 
the New Testament appears to afford no evidence of 
probation in hades, no solid ground on which to build 
a hope that some who die in their sins will repent and 
find pardon before " the last day." 

II. But there are passages which seem to warn us 
against indulging any expectation of such a change in 
that mysterious state, and to these we must now direct 



1 22 BIBLICAL E3CHATOLOGY. 

attention. They may be put in two classes — the first 
of which describes the intermediate state of unbelievers, 
and the second their final judgment. 

(1) Passages which represent the state of unbelievers 
after death as already fixed, (a) Of these there is one 
of supreme interest; one that teaches with perfect 
clearness the condition of departed spirits in hades. 
We refer to our Saviour's account of the rich man 
and Lazarus. If any part of the New Testament 
may be said to reveal the peculiarities of the middle 
state, it is this illustrative discourse recorded by Luke. 
(See 16: 19-31.) "And it came to pass, that the 
beggar died, and that he was carried away by the 
angels into Abraham's bosom : and the rich man also 
died, and was buried. And in hades he lifted up his 
eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, 

and Lazarus in his bosom And besides all 

this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, 
that they which would pass from hence to you may 
not be able, and that none may cross over from thence 
to us" (vs. 22, 26). 

It may be observed, in the first place, that the rich 
man after death was in hades, not Gehenna, that 
his brothers were still alive on the earth, and that to 
reach them from hades, or paradise, one must rise 
from the dead. Evidently, then, the resurrection had 
not yet taken place. (See ver. 31.) Abraham, Laza- 
rus, and the rich man, were still in the intermediate 
state. It may be observed, in the second place, that 
the rich man saw Abraham "afar off," and Lazarus 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 123 

in his bosom ; that an impassable gulf separated him 
from them, and that the good could offer no relief to 
the bad. Whatever may be the nature of the abyss 
which is fixed between the two classes, it is represented 
as making any communication of help from the one to 
the other impossible. And, surely, no reader of this 
passage would think of describing hades as a " realm of 
light, privilege, and joy," as a region bordering on the 
skies, where ampler knowledge, purer influences, and 
holier attractions draw the spirit upward, but rather 
as a realm of suffering, where the unfaithful learn the 
bitterness of the fruits of sin. In this respect the 
words of Jesus are positive and unambiguous, sweep- 
ing away every reason for thinking that the wicked 
after death have any solid ground for hope. If it were 
possible to discover in this passage a ray of hope for 
a the spirits in prison," this would be found, not in 
any offer of pardon referred to by Christ, but in the 
presumed tendency of suffering to cleanse the soul 
from sin, not in any increase of light or fuller 
display of mercy to the wicked after death, but in the 
purifying efficacy of penal woe. But the remedial 
power of woe is unproved and wholly untrustworthy. 
Hence the language of Christ in this passage under- 
mines the theory of probation for the wicked after death. 
To this conclusion it may, however, be objected that 
the rich man was a Jew, and that, like his brothers, he 
must, while enjoying the good things of life, have re- 
fused to hearken unto Moses and the prophets. He 
did not, therefore, belong to the unprivileged class of 



124 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

men ; his probation on earth had been sufficiently 
favorable. The objection is worthy of notice. For no 
man should overlook the fact that Jesus honored the 
Old Testament as a revelation from God, or that he 
referred to the writings of Moses in terms of the 
highest confidence. (Compare Matt. 5:17; John 5 : 
45-47, with Luke 16 : 31.) But it should at the same 
time be remembered that the writings of Moses and 
the prophets are far inferior to the gospel in describing 
the way of salvation. They contain no account of the 
life, death, and resurrection of the historical Christ. 
With this should be joined the fact that Jesus spoke 
of God's judgment on the contemporaries of Noah, 
and on the inhabitants of Sodom, as if it were alto- 
gether just; yet neither the antediluvians nor the 
Sodomites had even the Avritings of Moses for their 
instruction — much less had they a full knowledge of 
the historical Christ. (Matt. 24 : 37-39 ; Luke 17 : 
26-29.) And so, according to a principle laid down 
by himself (Luke 12: 47,48), Jesus declares that it 
will be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judg- 
ment than for Capernaum, where he had often preached 
and done mighty works. (Matt. 10 : 15; 11: 24; 
Luke 10 : 12, 14.) But if the antediluvians and 
Sodomites were to have the gospel preached to them 
in hades by Christ, as " Progressive Orthodoxy " 
affirms to be probable, their opportunity was to be 
made even greater before the judgment than that 
which the citizens of Capernaum could have had 
during the life of Jesus, and it cannot be seen why it 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 125 

would be more tolerable for them in the day of judg- 
ment than for these. In all the cases now before us it 
is certainly assumed that probation ends with the 
present life. And if the antediluvians, the Sodomites, 
the Jews who knew only Moses and the prophets, and 
the people whom Jesus taught during his earthly min- 
istry (none of whom comprehended the Saviour's 
death and resurrection), had a suitable probation on 
earth, must we not think that all have it ? For Jesus 
referred to the birds of heaven, and the lilies of the 
field, as teaching the character of God ; and it is diffi- 
cult to imagine that he assigned a lower place than 
Paul to the light of reason and conscience as inter- 
preters of nature and human conduct. (Compare Rom. 
1 : 20 f. ; 2 : 12-16.) 

(6) With the language of Christ may be compared 
that of Peter in his Second Epistle (2 : 4, 9) : " For if 
God spared not angels when they sinned, but casting 
them into Tartarus delivered them to pits of darkness, 
being reserved unto judgment .... the Lord knoweth 
how to deliver godly men out of temptation, and to 
reserve unrighteous men under punishment unto the 
day of judgment." Evidently Peter is speaking in 
this place of what God really does with wicked men 
after death. They are kept by him in penal suffering 
until the last great day, when the righteous judgment 
of God will be revealed. Thus the apostle has 
repeated substantially the teaching of his Master. But 
he does not describe those w^ho are reserved unto 
punishment as men who sinned against the clearest 



126 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

possible light, by rejecting the historical Christ when 
presented to them in the manner best suited to their 
state of mind, but simply as " unrighteous " (dduou-). 
And surely no one will pretend that the apostles did 
not esteem the heathen unrighteous. Paul had these 
in mind when he wrote to the Romans, that " the 
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all 
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold 
down the truth in unrighteousness." (Rom. 1 : 18 f.) 

(c) In 1 Peter 3 : 19, the sinful contemporaries of 
Noah are called " the spirits in prison," in view of 
their present condition; and this phraseology agrees 
perfectly with the idea which we have found expressed 
in the last passage. It does not indeed affirm punish- 
ment, unless being under guard, which was the Roman 
form of imprisonment, is considered a sort of punish- 
ment ; but it is entirely consistent with being punished, 
and the words of 2 Peter must therefore be explained 
as merely adding one feature to the picture. 

(d) The Book of Revelation seems to refer in a few 
places to the condition of wicked men between death 
and resurrection. E. g. y in 14 : 9 f . : "If any man 
worship the beast and his image .... he also shall 
drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is pre- 
pared unmixed in the cup of his anger ; and he shall 
be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence 
of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : 
and the smoke of their torment goeth up forever and 
ever," f. And in 19: 20, "they twain" [the beast 
and the false prophet] " were cast alive into the lake 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 127 

of fire that burnetii with- brimstone." Neither of these 
passages can be relied on with absolute confidence ; yet 
they both appear to favor the view that some at least 
of the wicked enter at death upon a condition of sorrow 
that will have no end. Even the resurrection and the 
judgment will not substantially modify their doom. 
For death and hades will at the final day be cast into 
the lake of fire. (20 : 13.) It is also to be noted that 
this book furnishes no evidence of repentance and for- 
giveness in the life to come ; though we might expect 
to find such evidence in a prophetic revelation, if any- 
where. 

(2) Passages which describe the last judgment. — 
All these agree in representing the conduct of men in 
this life as furnishing the materials for the final sen- 
tence. Not only are they silent as to any review of 
actions performed by men after death, but they seem 
by their language to restrict the deeds examined to 
those done in the body. 

This is done (a) by using the aorist tense in describ- 
ing them. Thus our Saviour said to the Jews: 
"Marvel not at this; for an hour cometh in which 
all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice and shall 
come forth ; they that did good (ol ra ayaM izorfaavrei) 
unto a resurrection of life, and they that practiced ill 
{pi to. <paT)Xa xpdzavTcz) unto a resurrection of judgment " 
(John 5 : 29). In the clauses "they that did good " 
and " they that practiced ill," we have two aorist par- 
ticiples preceded by the article, and naturally suggest- 
ing actions completed some time in the past, as 



128 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

contemplated at the last day. Hence they are quite 
in place, if the deeds of this life are referred to; in 
fact, the tense actually employed would, in that case, 
be the only suitable one. But if probation is to 
continue through the intermediate state to the judg- 
ment day, we should have expected the perfect tense 
in such clauses as these. Again, we read the words 
of Christ : "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, 
Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name, and by thy 
name cast out demons, and by thy name do many 
mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, 
I never knew you ; depart from me, ye that work 
iniquity " (Matt. 7 : 22, 23). Here the words by 
which the evil doers describe their action are in the 
aorist tense, and the remark on the foregoing passage 
is applicable to this. To the same effect is the lan- 
guage of Jesus in Luke: "And that servant who 
knew (6 yvobq) his lord's will, and did not prepare nor 
do (fjiij eroc/idGaq tj Totrjtraz) according to his will, shall 
be beaten with many stripes" (12:47). The same 
tense which, as used in this place represents action 
completed in past time, is also employed in the next 
verse. So, too, in Rev. 7 : 14 it is said : " These are 
they that come out of the great tribulation, and they 
washed their robes and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb," though not with reference to scenes at 
the last day. Still the condition of those who were 
"arrayed in white robes" is spoken of as due to what 
they did in a life already past, and their action in this 
life is described by verbs in the aorist tense. Indeed, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 129 

the New Testament writers uniformly appropriate 
this tense to descriptions of human conduct reviewed 
at the judgment day; and this circumstance alone is 
an argument of some weight against the theory of 
probation after death. 

(6) By limiting the scrutiny of actions in that day 
to such as are done here in the body. — Thus Jesus 
declares : " Every one therefore who shall confess me 
before men, him will I also confess before my Father 
who *is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me 
before men, him will I also deny before my Father 
who is in heaven " (Matt. 10 : 32, 33) ; and it can 
scarcely be doubted that the confession of Christ 
before men is an act to be performed in this life, and 
not in hades. The same is true of the denial. Again, 
the same great authority says at a later period of his 
ministry : " Then shall the king say unto them on his 
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father . . . 
For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was 
thirsty, and ye gave me to drink ; I was a stranger, 
and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed me," etc. 
" Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it to one 
of these my brethren, these least, ye did it unto me " 
(Matt. 25: 34-40). Now it is evident that the 
actions here specified, as representative of all that are 
to be reviewed by the Judge, are such as belong to the 
present life, and not to the intermediate state. If 
hunger, thirst, nakedness, imprisonment, can be predi- 
cated of any persons in hades, they cannot, surely, be 
affirmed of the brethren of Christ, for these are with 



130 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

the Lord in peace. Ministries of mercy to these must 
be performed in this life or never. Hence the con- 
duct of men while in the flesh is distinctly represented 
as determining the final sentence of the king. If they 
were his friends here, they will be received into life 
eternal hereafter ; if they were not his friends here, 
they will be cast away from his presence hereafter. 
Compare also the words of Jesus in Matt. 12 : 36, 37 : 
" I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of 
judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." The 
context renders it certain that speech in this present 
life is here meant. To suppose that the words of 
good or of evil spirits in the unseen world are here 
meant is wholly gratuitous and improbable. The 
tremendous lesson taught by Jesus is, that men's 
words in this life are fruits and revelations of charac- 
ter, deeds that will go very far towards fixing their 
destiny in the judgment. No part of human conduct 
is more strictly voluntary and moral, or more insepa- 
rably connected with eternal life or eternal death, than 
the words we speak. 

(c) By express statement. — In his Second Epistle to 
the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul says : " Wherefore 
w T e make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be 
well-pleasing unto him [i. e., the Lord]. For we must 
all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; 
that each one may receive the things done in the body, 
according to what he did, whether good or bad " (5 : 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 131 

9, 10). Of course, the immediate reference of these 
words is to Christians, and it may seem to be unsafe to 
infer from them anything in respect to those who are 
not Christians. But when we observe the use of 
the aorist tense, " according to what he did " (rrpd^ a 
Hpazev), and compare it with the words of Christ in 
John 5 ; 29, when we place the statement respecting 
" the things done through the body," beside the list 
of actions specified by the Son of man in Matt. 25 : 
31 f., and when we add the clause " whether good or 
bad" in the text before us, and compare it with " those 
that did good " and " those that practiced ill " (yauXov, 
bad, <p<wka, ill) in John 5 : 29, it will be evident that 
Paul is stating a universal fact, and that, unless he 
was mistaken, all men will be called to a public 
account before the bar of Christ, and will receive a 
sentence to life or death based on their conduct in this 
life. Of course, we very well know that, with Paul, 
no conduct would be regarded as acceptable to God 
which did not spring from true repentance and faith. 
Another passage may be cited from the same apostle : 
" Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he 
that soweth unto his own flesh, shall of the flesh reap 
corruption ; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall 
of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal. 6 : 7, 8). The 
obvious meaning of this language is that men should 
yield themselves to the Spirit of God, and not to their 
earthly and sinful nature, because even here they 
sow the seeds of eternal life or eternal death. 



132 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(d) By references to the judgment of the heathen. — 
For it is allowed by all that the heathen belong to the 
unprivileged part of mankind, and that if any are to 
have a probation in hades, it must be those who never 
heard the gospel on earth. Let us then look at the 
language of Scripture in respect to their destiny. In 
2 Thess. 1 : 8, the apostle describes Jesus Christ at his 
revelation from heaven, with the angels of his power, 
in a flame of fire, as " awarding vengeance to them 
that know not God, and to them that obey not the 
gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." According to the 
interpreters two classes of persons are here mentioned 
who will receive just punishment for their sins — 
namely, the heathen " who know not God " and the 
Jews " who obey not the gospel." A study of the use 
of the Greek article in such cases and of Paul's 
phraseology in speaking of the Gentiles, will probably 
convince every reader of the correctness of this expla- 
nation. But it is evident that the present participles 
which are translated "know not" and " obey not" 
characterize the classes referred to as they are in the 
present life. The Gentiles are conceived of as being, 
in the aggregate, culpably ignorant of God, and the 
Jews as culpably disobedient to the gospel. Both 
therefore are to be punished at the final coming of 
Christ. There is no intimation of further trial in 
more favorable circumstances for the unprivileged 
heathen or for the much-instructed Jew. And we can 
hardly forget in this connection the strong language 
which the same apostle uses in his Epistle to the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 133 

Romans, declaring that as the heathen did "not choose 
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over 
to a reprobate mind " (1 : 28). And in the next 
chapter he teaches that " tribulation and anguish " will 
be " upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the 
Jew first, and also of the Greek " (2: 9). But his 
words in Rom. 2 : 12 f., seem to be decisive of the 
point under examination : " For as many as sinned 
without 4 law shall perish without law." This refers 
beyond question to the doom of the heathen. Paul 
teaches explicitly, not that they shall have a post- 
mortem offer of life through Christ, but that due 
allowance will be made for their want of light on 
earth. They will not be held responsible for dis- 
obedience to the law of God as revealed in the Bible, 
but to that law as revealed in reason and conscience. 
He that has one talent will be required to answer for 
the use of one, and he that has ten, for the use of ten. 
Thus will the Most High adjust the inequalities of 
privilege in the present life. This is the judgment 
according to "my gospel" of which the apostle speaks 
in the same connection. (Rom. 2 : 16.) For the 
principle " He that is faithful in a very little, is 
faithful also in much ; and he that is unrighteous in a 
very little is unrighteous also in much" (Luke 16 : 10), 
will be verified at the last. It will then appear that 
character may be as distinctly revealed by the action 
of an untaught Hottentot who has been entrusted with 
only a single talent as by the action of a well-taught 
Englishman who has been entrusted with ten. 



134 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(3) Passages which associate judgment with death 
• — One of these is Heb. 9 : 27 : " Inasmuch as it is 
appointed unto men once to die, and after this judg-r 
ment," etc. Judgment, not probation, is the great 
thing after death' — apparently, nay, almost certainly, 
the next supreme event. And this agrees with the 
habitual reference to the second coming of Christ by 
the apostles as near to every one. Not much is said 
by the sacred writers about natural death ; and a fair 
way to account for this is to assume that they attached 
supreme importance, first, to this life as the period of 
grace; and secondly, to the glorious advent of Christ 
and the final judgment by him, as the next great 
event — the consummation of his reign. With the 
passage in Hebrews may be compared Ezek. 3 : 18-21 ; 
John 8 : 21-25; and Rev. 22: 11, especially when it 
is remembered that at the final coming of Christ there 
will be multitudes on the earth who will perish in their 
sins- (Matt. 13 : 30, 41, 42, 49 ; 25 : 19, 24 f. ; Rev. 
20 : 7-9.) According to the only natural interpreta- 
tion of the divine word, it must be assumed that the 
great multitudes who will be alive on the earth when 
Christ returns, and who will of course be made up of 
children and youth, as well as of persons in middle 
life and old age, will be changed and brought into 
judgment without any probation out of the body. 
Must we not, then, suppose that in those multitudes 
will be represented all classes and conditions of man- 
kind? And that if the Judge can deal justly with 
them on the basis of probation in this life, he can 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 135 

deal justly with all generations of mankind on the 
basis of their probation here ? If a reverent inter- 
pretation of Holy Scripture be our guide, the answer 
to these questions will be easily found. 

In "Progressive Orthodoxy," a future probation 
for all the unprivileged is inferred, (1) from the 
character of God, and (2) from the relation of Christ 
to all men. Under the first head may be brought 
such statements as these : " We may go so far as to 
say that it would not be just for God to condemn men 
hopelessly when they have not known him as he 
really is — when they have not known him in Jesus 
Christ. The judgment does not come till the gospel 
has been preached to all nations. The gospel is 
preached to a nation, not when within certain geo- 
graphical boundaries it has been proclaimed at scat- 
tered points, but only when in reality all individuals 
of all the nations have known it." (P. 64.) Again, 
" All this means that the supreme, final, absolute 
revelation of God to men is in the person and work 
of Jesus Christ; that, therefore, justice does not pro- 
nounce the word of destiny till love and mercy have 
gone forth to all those children who are partakers of 
the same flesh and blood of which he took part. If 
no man cometh to the Father but by Christ, we con- 
clude that without him — and almost as certainly we 
conclude that without the knowledge of him — no 
man can be brought back to God." (P. 65.) 

According to these and other passages — a) Sinners 
are not finally condemned because of their sins, but 



136 BIBLICAL, ESCHATOLOGY. 

because of a particular sin, because they do not re- 
pent when they know God as he is, know him in the 
clearest revelation that can be made to them of his 
character, which is love. 6) Such a knowledge of 
God is not given to all men in the present life, but 
those not receiving it here will have it given them 
hereafter, before the last judgment. For justice 
requires this. The offer of pardon on condition of 
repentance must be made to all in the most affecting 
manner possible, c) This, however, requires the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit in connection with a 
knowledge of the person and work of Christ. Thus 
it is said (p. 116) : "1. The work of the Holy Spirit, 
as a work in motive, fulfills and makes effective the 
method of salvation proposed by Christianity. 2. 
Historic Christianity alone offers sufficient material in 
motive, in the life, death, and resurrection of our 
Lord, for the natural and efficacious work of the 
Holy Spirit." 

On this it may be remarked, (a) That in so far as 
these statements are inferences from the character of 
God, they are inferences from that character imperfectly 
apprehended, and cannot, therefore, be accepted as 
conclusive. (6) That they do not agree with the 
prima facie meaning of Holy Scripture as to the con- 
dition of men by nature (Luke 19 : 10 ; John 3 : 14- 
16), as to the grounds of condemnation in the last day 
(2 Cor. 5: 10; Matt. 25: 26-30), and as to the 
method of grace. (Eph. 1 : 4; 2 Tim. 1 : 9.) 

Under the second head may be brought such state- 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 137 

merits as the following : " The Scriptures plainly teach 
the universality of Christ's work in its interest, its 

application, and its consummation It is not 

incumbent on us to quote Scripture which shall show 
that the heathen do have the gospel before they are 
judged." (p. 102.) .... " We are not as positive con- 
cerning the times, seasons, or circumstances under 
which God will reveal himself in Christ, as we are 
that the principle is of universal application : that no 
man will be finally judged till he knows God in the 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that no man will be 
hopelessly condemned except for the willful and final 
rejection of Christ. The sin against the Holy Ghost, 
which is thought to be that hostility to Christ which 
makes one incapable of redemption, is the only sin for 
which we are explicitly told there is no forgiveness in 
any world or age." (P. 105.) " The opinion, therefore, 
has reason in it that there would have been the incar- 
nation even if there had been no sin. It is not easy 
to believe that the Word of God would not have be- 
come flesh but for sin. . . . While sin may have had 
much to do with the conditions of our Lord's life and 
work, it may actually have retarded his historical 
appearance." (P. 45.) " Christ mediates God to the 
entire universe. . . . Christ cannot be indifferent to 
the least of his creatures in its pain and wickedness, 
for his universe is not attached to him externally, but 
vitally. He is not a governor set over it, but is its 
life everywhere," etc. (P. 44.) 

On these extracts it may be remarked : (a) Some of 



138 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

the language in them fails to discriminate properly 
between the preexistent Word and Jesus Christ. (6) 
Some of it affirms a closer relation of Christ to all cre- 
ated beings than the Bible suggests or reason teaches, 
(c) Some of it favors the opinion that the incarnation 
would have taken place if there had been no sin ; but 
this opinion is scarcely Biblical, (d) Some of it 
denies that any man will be finally condemned 
except for the sin against the Holy Spirit — a denial 
not justified by the Word of God. (e) Some of it 
appears to assert the universality of Christ's work, 
as though in the end all moral beings would be saved 
by it — an assertion which is opposed to strong Biblical 
evidence. 

The trend of reasoning in many passages of "Pro- 
gressive Orthodoxy " is distinctly towards the final 
restoration of all the wicked to holiness and God's 
favor. Yet there are explicit rejections of this theory 
on the ground of Holy Scriptures.* Moreover, the 
doctrinal equipoise of the work, as an exposition of 
Christian truth, is more or less disturbed by ignoring 
the justice of God. What justice requires him to do 
for sinners, and forbids him to do against them, is 
grasped far more firmly than what justice requires 
him to do against them. And finally in the argument 
for probation after death, the light which God gives 
to the heathen by reason, conscience, the order of 

* See an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1888, by 
Be v. A. J. Lyman, Brooklyn, N. Y., on "The Dogma of Pro- 
bation after Death Untenable and Illiberal." 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 139 

nature and of providence, and by the Holy Spirit, is 
strangely undervalued. 

But is there any evidence that human probation 
after death wculd increase the number of the saved ? 
Is it probable that the conditions of moral life would 
be as favorable to repentance then as now ? In hades 
as on earth ? May we not justly surmise that the total 
silence of Scripture as to the recovery of evil spirits to 
holiness is due to the fact that sin in purely spiritual 
beings is a more willful and obstinate choice of self in 
place of God, than it is in human beings as now consti- 
tuted ? This is not expressly taught ; but do not the 
revealed facts favor this view rather than the oppo- 
site? Assuming that a sinful choice in moral beings 
always tends to become confirmed and unchangeable, 
it may yet be true that this tendency operates more 
slowly under the conditions of our present life than it 
does in the case of unembodied or disembodied spirits. 
For in our present condition (1) we have to spend 
much time, thought, and labor, in supporting and 
protecting the body. The law of nature and of God 
makes this our duty, and in performing this duty we 
are obedient to reason and conscience. How large a 
part of life is thus occupied in doing what is believed 
to be right and according to God's will ! And, by so 
much, progress in evil is delayed. Says George Mac- 
donald in " Malcom " : " He lacked labor, the most 
healing of all God's holy things, of which we so often 
lose the heavenly benefit by laboring inordinately that 
we may rise above the earthly naed of it. How many 



140 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

sighs are wasted over the toil of the sickly — a toil 
which perhaps lifts off half the weight of their sick- 
ness, elevates the inner life, and makes the outer pass 
with twofold rapidity," 

(2) We have to spend much time and toil in pro- 
viding the comforts of life for members of the same 
family. Domestic ties are very close, and the duties 
which they impose peculiarly sacred. But they ap- 
pear to be conditioned on our physical nature, and to 
belong especially to this period of our existence. Now 
most of the time and thought given to these duties is 
believed to be used in accord with the divine will. 
At least, they are performed without conscious oppo- 
sition to that will, or to the law prescribed by it. 
Hence the spirit of rebellion is not directly fostered 
by them. Nay, more, they seem not to originate in 
pure selfishness, but rather in natural reason and 
affection. Hence their influence is preventive of 
rapid spiritual deterioration. Family ties have also a 
certain tendency to keep the heart gentle and suscepti- 
ble to divine appeals. But these ties will be shorn of 
their power at death — if not wholly, yet in a great 
measure. 

(3) We have to spend much time and strength in 
social, civil, patriotic, and humane activity, which is 
prompted by reason and conscience. There is ground 
to suspect that men are less isolated now than they 
will be after death. Almost everything in this life 
links us in some way to other men. We are made to 
feel that no one liveth to himself or dieth to himself. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 141 

Thus patriotism grows out of a common soil and 
peril and hope ; and philanthropy, out of a com- 
mon origin and destiny. The kinship of mankind 
generates a feeling that men ought to serve one 
another. To be a man is to possess the secret of 
human nature and the key to human hearts every- 
where. And, therefore, a portion of our activity 
here, which may be described as social, patriotic, or 
philanthropic, tends to retard in some degree the 
growth of mere selfishness and conscious hatred of 
God, so that the heart remains for a longer time 
pervious to good moral influence. But after death, 
many, if not all of these ties, will be sundered, 
and the naked spirit dwell apart ; or, if it have any 
society, it will be that of spirits morally akin to itself. 
Such, at least, is the impression made upon the mind 
by Biblical allusions to the state of wicked men after 
death. How much less favorable to their recovery 
from sin than their state here ! 

(4) We have also in this life the advantage of 
hearing truth from men like ourselves, who have 
experienced its power to save. Consider the myste- 
rious influence of human feeling when the speaker's 
whole physical being is penetrated and vivified by 
it — when the animated face, the glowing eye, the 
thrilling voice, and the irrepressible gesture speed the 
message on its way to a brother's heart ! It is diffi- 
cult to imagine any method of appeal surpassing this 
in moral effect. Consider also the countless emblems 
and parables of religious truth which are furnished 



142 JBIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

by the works of nature and the lives of men. 
Whether these illustrations would be as attractive 
and convincing in a life out of the body may well be 
doubted. Here they are natural, and their power is 
felt. Here they were employed by Him who knew 
the way to human hearts, and never spoke amiss. 
But it is hardly possible to believe that they would 
retain all their power and vividness for spirits that 
had passed into the unseen, bidding adieu to flesh and 
blood. Speaking with the utmost caution, it seems 
improbable that the condition of sinful souls after 
death can be as well adapted to the reception of the 
gospel as their condition now, or that the means of 
impressing it upon them there can be as effective as 
those employed by us here. And this must be cau- 
tiously weighed in seeking for the truth. 

(5) We therefore esteem a probation limited to this 
life more favorable to sinners than one that should be 
continued indefinitely beyond, even to the judgment 
day. But why, it may be asked, should there be any 
limit to the day of grace ? Why must the door of 
escape from sin be ever closed ? Because it would be 
useless to keep it open forever, since choice has a ten- 
dency to become irrevocable and character fixed. To 
a sinner repentance is an unwelcome duty. When 
urged to its performance, he is apt to say, with Felix, 
■ c Go thy way for this time ; and when I have a con- 
venient season I will call for thee " (Acts 24 : 25). 
Alas ! how seldom does that season ever come ! A 
selfish heart will put off the duty of turning to the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 143 

Lord until the last moment. What, then, would be 
the influence upon such a heart of a knowledge that 
deliverance from sin would never be impossible? Or, 
what the influence of a presentiment that, far on in 
the future, there would be a " convenient season " for 
repentance? There is reason to believe that such a 
knowledge or presentiment would lead multitudes to 
postpone repentance until their nature had become 
fixed in sin, and the call of God an empty message to 
the ear. So, then, there is reason to believe that a 
short period of grace may be far better, in reality, than 
a long one, and that the very mercy of God moved him 
to fix a limit to the day of salvation. That the spirits 
of bad men who had continued impenitent and in 
prison from the days of Noah until the death of 
Christ — above two thousand years— -should then have 
repented, though Jews on earth would not, is equally 
without probability and without proof. Again, that 
there will be no unprivileged men, no infants, and no 
imbeciles on earth at the final coming of Christ to 
judge the living and the dead, is utterly improbable. 
But the living are to be changed " in a moment" at 
"the last trump," and, according to the obvious sense 
of Holy Scripture, are to be judged without further 
probation. If, then, we are constrained to believe 
that no injustice will be done to any of these, are we 
not bound to look upon probation in this life as suffi- 
cient for the earlier generations also? 

From the fact that no account of the last judgment 
refers to the case of infants or of idiots, we think it 



144 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

rational to infer that, from the beginning of time, the 
effect of the fall upon their moral nature has been 
removed by the Saviour, through the work of the 
Spirit, before they enter the life to come. No other 
hypothesis agrees so well with the assuring silence of 
Scripture in regard to their destiny ; for we are unable 
to find within the lids of the Bible any hint of their 
being lost hereafter, or any faintest suggestion of 
prayer for their renewal after death. It is therefore 
safe to trust that, in the case of those who are thus 
removed from the only hopeful state of probation, the 
second Adam has by his perfect grace destroyed the 
work of the first Adam. In looking at their case we 
discover no ground for the doctrine of probation after 
death. It is a doctrine which lacks any solid foun- 
dations in the word or character of God. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE LAST JUDGMENT. 

There is a sense in which God judges men per- 
petually. To him "the books" are always open and 
the account balanced, so that every man is either 
acquitted or condemned. At every instant and with 
reference to every person it may be said : " Jehovah 
is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are 
weighed " (1 Sam. 2 : 3). But this does not render 
" the last day" superfluous ; for the object of that day 
is "the manifestation of the righteous judgment of 
God," while his perpetual judgment is known only to 
himself. Not even to the conscience of the person 
judged is the mind of God as to the degree of his 
guilt fully revealed in this life : much less is it revealed 
to others. Hence the bad are sometimes esteemed 
good, and the good bad ; the hypocrite is reverenced 
for sanctity, and the upright man suspected of evil. 
But the veil will be lifted at the last day. " Then 
God will make judgment the line, and righteousness 
the plummet" (Isa. 28 : 17). Misapprehensions will 
be corrected ; for " God will bring every work into 
judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be 
good or whether it be bad" (Eccl. 12:14). In 
respect to that judgment the following particulars are 
made known by the word of God : 

K 145 



146 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(1) It will be conducted by the Lord Jesus Christ. — 
This is distinctly affirmed by the Saviour in John 5 : 
22, 23, 27, 29 ; and in Matt. 25 : 31-46 ; not to men- 
tion other passages. It is also plainly asserted by 
Paul in Acts 17 : 31 ; 2 Cor. 5: 10; 2 Tim. 4 : 1. 
Paul declares that God " hath appointed a day in the 
which he will judge the world in righteousness by the 
man whom he hath ordained," etc., and the expres- 
sion, translated " the world," means literally " the 
inhabited earth," or, by metonomy, "the inhabitants 
of the earth." And there is no occasion for doubting 
that he intended by this all mankind. 

In the Saviour's words preserved by John a reason 
why the judgment of men was assigned to him is 
stated. " He" — the Father — "gave him authority to 
execute judgment, because he is a Son of man." His 
genuine humanity rendered it suitable that he should 
fill this office than which a higher can scarcely be 
imagined. The Sufferer must be crowned; the 
Redeemer must be made Head over all. Whether his 
ability to sympathize with men was also a reason for 
committing the work of judgment to him is left unde- 
cided by the context. 

But there is evidence that Jesus Christ will associ- 
ate with himself as judges those whom he has re- 
deemed. (Matt. 19 : 28 ; Luke 22 : 30 ; 1 Cor. 6 : 2, 
3.) On the first of these passages Dr. Broadus re- 
marks: "It is idle to insist upon the exact number 
twelve," and Ui judging the twelve tribes of Israel y cer- 
tainly does not mean that only Jews will be judged, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 147 

or that one apostle will judge one tribe." An Ori- 
ental monarch "often had persons seated near him 
(called by the Romans 'assessors'), to aid him in 
judging" (Rev. 4: 4). To such a position will the 
Twelve be exalted at the last day. Dr. Bliss, com- 
menting on the second passage, finds the essence of 
the thought to be this, "that in the day of judgment 
their testimony concerning the truth of the gospel, and 
its indispensable power to save, shall condemn the 
mass of the unbelieving Jews." But when these pas- 
sages are compared with the third, it becomes evident 
that judicial functions are prominent in the Saviour's 
words, and that the least which they can be supposed 
to teach is that in the final judgment the Twelve, and 
indeed "all saints," will be taken into the counsel and 
called to unite in the decision of the infallible Judge 
as to the guilt and doom of the wicked, whether 
angels or men. Not that they will be helpful to the 
great King in forming his decisions, but that they 
will be honored as his friends with so full a view of 
the reasons for every decision, as to make it as truly 
theirs as his own. What a pledge is this of the high 
intelligence and the moral perfection to which the 
saints will be exalted ! It seems almost incredible 
that sinful men should ever rise by the power of 
divine grace into this absolute union with their Lord, 
even when his righteous judgment condemns the un- 
believing. 

This view of the participation of the redeemed in 
the judging of angels and men at " the last day " sug- 



148 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

gests the probability that the word "day" may in 
this connection denote a longer period of time than is 
sometimes supposed. It is really an indefinite ex- 
pression, and one may well bear in mind the language 
of Peter, that " one day is with the Lord as a thou- 
sand years, and a thousand years as one day " (2 Pet. 
3 : 8). It is vain for us to attempt conjecture, for we 
have no means of ascertaining, even approximately, the 
rapidity with which events may pass before the mind 
in the future life. 

But there are other statements of Scripture closely 
allied in meaning to those which refer to the judicial 
function of the saints, statements that speak of them 
as reigning with Christ, or as sharing his glory. (See 
Matt. 25 : 21, 23; Luke 19 : 17-19 ; Rom. 5 : 17 ; 8 : 
17 ; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 20 : 4; 22 : 5.) Some of these 
may be fulfilled before the last judgment, and some 
of them after that august event; but beyond all 
doubt, they assign a regal position to the friends of 
Christ. 

(2) It will be a universal judgment — That is to 
say, all mankind, from the time of Adam to that of 
Christ's final appearance, will be subject to it. In 
proof of this statement, our appeal is to the following 
passages: Heb. 9: 27; Matt. 12: 36, 37; 25: 32; 
Acts 17 : 31 ; Rom. 14 : 10 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 10 ; 2 Thess. 
1: 6-10; Rev. 20: 11-15. If there be any excep- 
tion to the universality of the judgment as related to 
mankind, it must be of those only who were in- 
capable of moral action during their earthly life. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 149 

Apart from these, all will be called to give account of 
their words and deeds to him who is ready to judge 
both the living and the dead. (See especially Eccl. 
12 : 14 ; Matt. 12 : 36, 37 ; Heb. 9 : 27.) As to the 
comprehension of the words, "all the nations/' 
(Tzavra ra sOvt)), there is some difference of opinion. 
Several interpreters maintain the opinion that it refers 
to non-Christians only: so Keil, Olsh., Greswell. 
Others believe that it refers to Christians only : as 
Grotius and Meyer. But neither of these views is 
satisfactory. A great majority of interpreters, ancient 
and modern, are agreed in holding that the expres- 
sion, "all the nations/' is tantamount to "all man- 
kind." Bengel says, in his inimitable manner, "All 
the angels, all the nations, how vast an assembly!" 
Weighty objections lie against any restriction of the 
sense of the words, izd^a ra e'0v^ in this place. But 
while insisting that these words describe the judg- 
ment as universal, we do not attach special importance 
to the form of procedure delineated. The throne, the 
placing of the good on the right hand, and the bad 
on the left, and the particular phraseology employed 
respecting the conduct of the two classes may be 
regarded as figurative, though it must never be for- 
gotten that these figures stand for realities. Yet 
their exact import will be considered under the next 
head. 

In calling the last judgment " universal " reference 
has only been made thus far to mankind. But the 
question presents itself naturally : Are not angels to 



150 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

be judged at the same time? If the language of 
Phil. 2 : 10, 11 is related to that of Rom. 14 : 9-12, 
and refers to the judgment day> must we not include 
angels among those who are to give an account of 
their stewardship, and bow before the divine Judge? 
Paul appears to associate the judging of the world 
with the judging of angels: "Know ye not that the 
saints shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that 
we shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6 : 2, 3.) Moreover, 
it is evident from the whole tenor of the New Testa- 
ment, that evil spirits or demons, under the leader- 
ship of Satan, have always had much to do with the 
wickedness of mankind. Satan is called the " prince 
of this world" (John 12 : 31), whose power was first 
brokenly the crucifixion of Christ ; and the unequivo- 
cal testimony of the evangelists assures us that he un- 
dertook to seduce the Lord Jesus from his appointed 
course. Since, then, the relation of sinful angels to 
mankind has been so intimate and influential, since 
their life has touched human life at so many invisible 
points, it would seem almost necessary to connect 
their judgment and final doom with those of men. 
And there is an intimation in Matt. 8 : 29, " Art 
thou come to torment us before the time?" that evil 
spirits look forward to a day that will bring severer 
punishment than they now suffer ; and the language 
of Jude, verse 6, appears to specify that day : " And 
angels which kept not their own principality, but left 
their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting 
bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 151 

great day." Of the nature of the " bonds " and 
" darkness" here mentioned, we have no definite 
knowledge, but they must not be supposed incon- 
sistent with the activity of the angels in tempting 
men. Moreover, their judgment is assigned to the 
same King and the same day as is the judgment of 
mankind. But the words of Jesus in Matt. 13 : 39,* 
49 ; 16 : 27 ; 24 : 31 ; 25 : 31, and Mark 8 : 38, imply 
that the holy angels w T ill not be then judged, but will 
attend and serve the holy Judge. In speaking, then, 
of the last judgment as " universal," we refer to evil 
angels as well as to the fallen human race. 

(3) It will be a righteous judgment. This fact is of 
the utmost importance, and should never be lost sight 
of. By the final sentence no one will be wronged — 
every one will be sent to his own place. The pro- 
ceedings of that day will be such as to illuminate the 
dark features of providence, and vindicate the ways 
of God to men, so that the good will never more be 
able to doubt his righteousness. (Acts 17 : 31.) 

Three particulars respecting the last judgment are 
worthy of special consideration : (a) That every act 
of life will be brought under review. (Eccl. 11:9; 
12:14; Rom. 2:6-11; 14: 12; 1 Cor. 4 : 5 ; 2 Cor. 
5:10; Rev. 2 : 23 ; 20 : 12.) (Cf. Gal. 6 : 7-9.) Can 
anything be fairer than this? The decision will be 
founded on the whole life. No voluntary movement 
of the spirit will be overlooked or misinterpreted. 
Secrets will then be revealed and data for a perfect 
estimate of character be made manifest. The princi- 



152 BIBLICAL ESGHATOLOGY. 

pie announced by Christ in the words, "by their 
fruits ye shall know them" (Matt. 7 : 16), will then 
be verified as never before ; for all the fruits of moral 
life will be seen, and seen with unbiased mind. 
(b) That every circumstance of personal life affecting 
moral conduct in the slightest degree will be taken 
into the account. The man who was intrusted with 
one talent will not be called to answer for the use of 
ten. (Matt. 25 : 15 f. ; Luke 12 : 47, 48 ; 19 : 13-25; 
Rom. 2 : 12 f.) The same truth is implied in the 
passages which affirm that "God is no respecter of 
persons " (e. g., Acts 10 : 34, 35). The unprivileged 
classes, or those who have but little truth in respect to 
God and duty put within their reach, will not be held 
responsible for the use or abuse of much truth. " It 
standeth to reason, that he who had most light, most 
conviction, most means of conversion, and that was 
highest towards heaven, he must needs have the 
greatest fall, and so sink deepest into the jaws of eternal 
misery." (Bunyan, II., 128.) We need not fear that 
Christ will deal hardly with any man at the last day. 
Then "all odds will be made even," and no one will 
be able to say in truth that he is not treated as well as 
his neighbor, (c) That union with Christ will insure 
forgiveness and justification in that day. Then will 
be seen, as never before, the infinite graciousness of 
Christ towards all who are in spirit allied to him, 
towards all who, are conscious of their ill desert, and 
who appreciate divine mercy. (See Matt. 25 : 34-40; 
John 6 : 29 : Rom. 6 : 14, 15, 16.) And the same day 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 153 

will reveal the morally perverse and self-righteous 
spirit of those who are out of Christ. (See Matt 7 : 
22; 25:41-45.) 

But will the record of their past sins confront the 
saints, and be exposed to the gaze of all the universe? 
There is reason to believe it will. That day will be 
one of open vision, and we cannot but suppose that 
the saints themselves will be unwilling to have it any- 
thing else. So deep will be their gratitude and so 
ardent their love to the Saviour, that they will desire 
to have the relation of his mercy to their guilt per- 
fectly manifested. And it is difficult to imagine how 
this can ever be done to finite minds without a full 
review of the past. 

As to the effect of the disclosures of the final day 
upon the ungodly the Scriptures are for the most part 
silent. In the parable of the marriage feast Jesus 
represents the guest without a wedding garment as 
being " speechless/' when asked by the king, "How 
earnest thou in hither not having a wedding-gar- 
ment?" (Matt. 22: 12.) But in the great passage, 
Matt. 25: 31-46, those on the left hand are represented 
as objecting to the charges made against them : 
" When saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not 
minister unto thee." Yet they make no reply to his 
words, uttered in response to this question : " Inas- 
much as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it 
not unto me." To this no answer can be made. 

John Bunyan says (in "The Jerusalem Sinner 



154 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

Saved/' I., p. 86) : " I have often thought of the day 
of judgment, and how God will deal with sinners at 
that day ; and I believe it will be managed with such 
sweetness, with such equitableness, with such excellent 
righteousness, as to' every sin, and circumstance, and 
aggravation thereof, that men who are damned, will, 
before the judgment is over, receive such conviction 
of the righteous judgment of God upon them, and of 
their deserts of hell-fire, that they will in themselves 
conclude there is all the reason in the world why they 
should be shut out of heaven," etc. But no statement 
in the Word of God clearly teaches this view, and we 
must therefore look upon it as scarcely more than a 
devout conjecture. How different the impression made 
upon one's mind by Michel Angelo's fresco of the 
Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, at Rome ! or 
even by the solemn mediaeval hymn, the Dies Irce. 
Notice the tone of the following stanzas : 

1. Dies Irae, dies ilia ! 
Solvet saeclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla. 

2. Quantus tremor est futurus, 
Quando judex est venturus, 
Cuncta stricte discussurus. 

6. Judex ergo quum sedebit, 
Quidquid latet apparebit, 
Nil inultum remanebit. 

18. Lachrymosa dies ilia, 
Qua resurget ex favilla 
Judicandus homo reus ; 
Huic ergo parce, Deus. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 155 

[TRANSLATED BY DR. FRANKLIN JOHNSON.] 

1. Day of wrath, that day of burning ! 
Earth shall end, to ashes turning : 
Thus sing Saint and Seer discerning. 

2. How shall quake both high and lowly, 
When the judge shall come, most holy, 
Strict to search all sin and folly ! 

6. Thereupon the judge is seated, 
And our sins are loud repeated, 
And to each is vengeance meted. 

18. Ah, that day, that day of weeping, 
When, no more in ashes sleeping, 
Man shall rise and stand before thee ! 
Spare him, spare him, I implore thee. 

If we incline to Bunyan's view of the last judgment, 
it is not that we are unmoved by the solemn grandeur, 
of the Latin hymn, but that we think the tone of 
Bunyan's language as nearly Scriptural as that of the 
Dies Irse. 



CHAPTER Y. 

THE FINAL STATE OF BELIEVERS. 

No literal account of this state is given by the 
sacred writers. The Saviour maintained a holy- 
reserve in all his allusions to it. " Enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord " (Matt. 25 : 21, 23); " inherit 
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of 
the world" (Matt. 25: 34); " but the righteous into 
life eternal" (Id. 46) ; " they that have done good to 
the resurrection of life" (John 5: 29); " In my 
Father's house are many mansions. ... I go to pre- 
pare a place for you that where I am ye may 

be also" (Id. 14 : 2, 3) ; " Father, that which thou 
hast given me, I will that where I am, they also may 
be with me ; that they may behold my glory, which 
thou hast given me" (Id. 17: 24). Hardly more 
definite are any descriptions of the inspired writers. 
Paul asserts that at the resurrection " this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put 
on immortality" (1 Cor. 15: 53); that "to them 
who by patient continuance in well doing seek for 
glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life will be 
given" (Rom. 2:7); that Christians "are heirs of 
God, and joint heirs with Christ," that, suffering with 
him, they " may be also glorified with him " (Id. 8 : 
17); that "our light affliction, which is for the mo- 
156 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 157 

ment, worketh for us more and more exceeding-lv an 
eternal weight of glory " (2 Cor. 4 : 17) ; that " if 
we died with him, we shall also live w T ith him ; if we 
endure, we shall also reign with him " (2 Tim. 2 : 
11, 12). And in the last chapters of Revelation, 
under the figure of a holy city, illuminated by the 
presence of God and the Lamb, the highest conceivable 
state of security and joy is made the eternal portion of 
the saints. (22: 1 f., and comp. 4: 1-11; 5: 8-14; 
21 : 10-27.) 

Of this state it may be remarked : 

(1) That it begins directly after the last judgment. — 
The object of that judgment, and the account given of 
it by Christ himself, lead to this statement. More- 
over, the belief of Christendom is one on the point. 

(2) That it continues the same in hind forever. — 
"There," says Augustine, "our being will have no 
death, there our knowledge will have no error, there 
our love will have no aversion " (De Civ. Dei, 1J, 28). 
Let such a state be without end, and it is heaven. 
Not repose, not apathy, not unconsciousness, but the 
highest degree of moral freedom and activity, under 
the impulse of holy love, is the Christian conception 
of heaven. Perfect life, not death ; perfect society, 
not solitude; perfect service, not idleness — is the 
highest ideal of existence; it is eternal life in the only 
sense of this expression recognized by the sacred 
writers. Its germ is implanted I y regeneration ; its 
maturity is reached by the resurrection ; its fruition 
is synchronous with the endless life of God. 



158 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

(3) That its blessedness is enhanced by fidelity here. — 
No spiritual attainment in knowledge or habit will be 
lost at death. The believer who enters the other 
world rich in faith will have this advantage at the 
start there. No good lesson will perish. No insight 
gained by prayer and study will be without some good 
effect upon life in glory. Yet fidelity here is not the 
only thing which affects the blessedness of saints in 
the final state. Original capacity may have much to do 
with it. For in this respect there seems to be a real 
difference between man and man. Some are made for 
larger achievements than others, and this capacity will 
inure to their benefit hereafter. So, too, there is a 
knowedge of human sinfulness and divine grace which 
is due to the providence of God, rather than to per- 
sonal service, and which may noue the less increase 
the blessedness of its possessor. But holy living 
amid the trials of earth will surely be one condition 
of enhanced blessedness in the world of light. (Dan. 
12 ; 3 ; Rom. 2 : 6, 7 ; Phil. 4 : 1 ; 1 Thess. 2 : 19, 
20.) " The enthroned Christ welcomes all who have 
known the fellowship of his sufferings into the fullness 
of his heavenly joy, unshaded, unbroken, unspeakable ; 
and they pass into it as into an encompassing atmos- 
phere, or some broad land of peace and abundance." 
— (Sunday School Times, for April 30, 1883.) 

(4) That its blessedness is forever increasing. — This 
may be safely inferred from what we know of the 
human soul. Growth is a law of its nature, unless 
that nature is in some way mutilated or paralyzed. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY, 159 

There is no limit to desire of knowledge in the mind 
of man, and no limit to the sources of knowledge in 
the universe of God. " All thy works praise thee " is 
the testimony of a devout worshiper. 

We are not sure that a direct vision of God will 
ever be possible to finite beings, though the words of 
Paul in 1 Cor. 13 : 12, "For now we see in a mirror, 
darkly ; but then, face to face," suggest a mode of 
knowledge which may be thus characterized ; but we 
are sure that the works of God will be more trans- 
lucent to the saints in glory than they are to saints on 
earth; we are satisfied that "abideth," in verse 13, 
" conveys the deep thought that faith, hope, and love, 
will endure for evermore. Faith will become ever 
more intense, hope ever brighter, and love, the sus- 
tainer of both, ever more deep and energizing " (Elli- 
cott). We are sure that the words " I shall fully know 
even as I was fully known " (Ibid.) point to a kind 
and degree of knowledge unlike anything possessed in 
this life, and we are confident that this knowledge, 
ever increasing, will be accompanied with ever-increas- 
ing happiness. 

Said Beatrice to Dante : " We from the greatest body 
Have issued to the heaven that is pure light — 
Light intellectual replete with love, 
Love of true good replete with ecstacy, 
Ecstacy that transcendeth every sweetness/ ' 

{Paradise, 30, 38 f.) 

But whatever may be thought as to an immediate 
vision of the divine nature, there can be no doubt as 



160 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

to the visible presence of Christ in " the body of his 
glory " (Phil. 3 : 21), or as to the unutterable joy 
which that presence will produce in his saints. Blessed 
society! A multitude which no man can number, 
engaged in service which every one enjoys, and mov- 
ing upward to more radiant heights of goodness and 
of power ! 

"Then . . . 

Joy shall overtake us as a flood, 
When everything that is sincerely good 
And perfectly divine, 

With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine 
About the supreme throne.' ' 

{Milton's Sonnet on Time.) 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE FINAL STATE OF UNBELIEVEES. 

The teaching of the Holy Scriptures in regard to 
this state comprises the following particulars : 

(1) That it begins directly after the last judgment — 
Retribution naturally follows judgment, and there are 
many expressions in the Word of God that seem to 
connect the final state of the wicked with that act. 
(e. g., Matt. 25: 41, 46; Rom. 2: 5-16; Rev. 20: 
10-15.) 

(2) Thai it continues the same in kind forever. — The 
language of Christ and the apostles is apparently unam- 
biguous on this point. (See Matt. 25 : 46 ; Mark 9 : 
47, 48 ; Rev. 20 : 10, 15 ; 22 : 11, 15.) The expla- 
nation of the Greek word or words translated " eter- 
nal," " forever," etc., as denoting quality, rather than 
duration, must be pronounced untenable. Its origin 
may probably be traced to the opposition which men 
feel to the doctrine of endless misery. This doctrine 
is said to be abhorrent to reason and inconsistent with 
the perfection of God. Nevertheless, an impartial 
study of what the Lord Jesus and his apostles taught 
leads to this startling and offensive doctrine. Presi- 
dent Dwight, in his note on Matt. 25 : 46, says: "The 
Revised Version has undoubtedly dealt fairly with the 
text in placing the word 'eternal' in both clauses; 

L 161 



162 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

for this is the better and more accurate English ren- 
dering of the word, and it cannot be doubted that the 
word should have the same rendering in the first case 
which it has in the second. The Greek word here 
used, if turned into a corresponding form in our lan- 
guage, would be represented by ceonian. The space 
allowed for these notes gives no opportunity for the 
discussion of this word ; but the writer of the note 
would say that in his view the adjective had in it the 
quantitative, rather than the qualitative, element, as it 
was used by the New Testament writers in general, 
and* that even what may be called its qualitative use 
in John's Gospel was, if we may so .express it, founded 
upon the quantitative idea. The word seems to have 
been a word involving the idea of duration ; and, in the 
adjective form, it seems to have come into use as the 
thought of duration began to reach out more fully 
beyond this earthly life " (Sunday School Times, for 
May 6, 1888). The writer of this book dissents from 
the opinion that alwvwq has a qualitative sense in the 
Fourth Gospel. The term " life " is very often found 
in the writings of John having a higher and spiritual 
sense not belonging to the word in its ordinary use ; 
but the adjective " eternal " retains everywhere its cus- 
tomary reference to duration. True life is eternal, as 
well as holy and blessed. That the qualitative idea 
attaches to the word " life " is evident from its use in 
this higher sense without the adjective — e. g. y in John 
3:36 b ;5:24 b , 40, 6 : 33, 35, 53, 63, etc. The adjec- 
tive is associated with " life " forty-three times in the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 163 

New Testament; but also with such w r ords as, "God/! 
" Spirit/' " glory/' " weight of glory," " redemption/' 
" salvation/' " gospel/' " covenant/' " kingdom/' " in- 
heritance/' "tabernacles/' "house in heaven/' "com- 
fort/' "power/' "judgment/' "punishment/' "fire/' 
"destruction/' "siu," "thiugs not seen/' and in all 
cases the quantitative sense of the word " eternal " 
suits the connection. (See p. 181, 1. 7.) (See Thayer's 
Greek-English Lexicon of the New x Testament, under 
the words aid>v and ald>vio$ ; also Cremer's Biblico- 
Theological Lexicon of New Test. Greek, under the 
same words.) 

In looking at this doctrine three things should 
always be borne in mind, (a) That no one of us can 
fairly claim to know the demerit of sin, or the penalty 
which absolute holiness would inflict on the sinner* 
Imperfect knowledge and conscious selfishness dis- 
qualify every man for the office of judge in this 
matter, (b) That God perfectly know T s the nature of 
man, the demerit of sin, and the misery which should 
be its retribution. Moreover, the perfection of his 
character is more certain to our reason than the injus- 
tice of eternal punishment, (c) That eternal sin is 
presupposed by eternal misery. It is the impenitent, 
the unbelieving, the enemies of God and righteousness, 
who are cast out into the outside darkness, and there 
is no evidence that they will ever come to a better 
mind. In a moral universe, rightly constituted, incor- 
rigible wickedness draws after it perpetual loss and 
pain. The worm that dieth not is kept alive by sin, 



164 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

and sin is the movement of a free being in his chosen 
way. If he is a slave, he is in bondage to self, and 
not to another. 

(3) That it is worse for some than for others. (Matt. 
11 : 21-24 ; Luke 12 : 47, 48 ; Heb. 10 : 29.)— There 
are degrees of punishment in the final state. Some 
unbelievers are more guilty than others, since they 
have rejected clearer light, and have become more 
hardened and bitter in their enmity to God. Justice 
will therefore impose a severer penalty on them. But 
no one will suffer a breath of anguish more than he 
ought to suffer. Whether the misery of the lost will 
increase from aeon to aeon, or will soon reach its maxi- 
mum and then remain practically stationary, we are 
unable to say. In favor of the former hypothesis 
appeal may be made to the law of progress in the 
present life. Bad men and good are both endowed 
with faculties and impulses tending to 'growth. Why 
should it not be so hereafter ? Why should not the 
love of knowledge continue active, and the mind itself 
be enlarged without limit ? General observation favors 
this view. But in favor of the latter hypothesis, it 
may be urged, that a sense of guilt tends to rob men 
of hope, to make them love darkness rather than light, 
to concentrate thought and desire upon self; and that 
all this belittles the soul and limits the range of its 
activity. In a word, growth must be retarded, if not 
wholly arrested, by sin and despair. This result is 
also suggested by some of the imagery employed by 
the sacred writers in describing the state of the lost — 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 165 

e. g. y by the outside darkness. But we are moving in 
the realm of speculation, and cannot be sure that it is 
towards the truth. Certainly no one can hold that 
this process of self-reproach, isolation, and hopeless 
inaction, will at last end in unconsciousness, without 
misinterpreting the word of God. Nirvana is not the 
final state of unbelievers. Eternal rest is not eternal 
punishment. The words of Dr. McLaren deserve 
to be read : " The fate of the indolent servant has a 
double horror. It is loss and suffering. . . . Gifts 
unemployed are stripped off a soul yonder. How 
much will go from many a richly endowed spirit, 
which here flashed with unconsecrated genius and 
force ! . . . How far that process of divesting may go 
on faculties, without touching the life, who can tell ? 
• . . But loss is not all the indolent servant's doom. 
Once more, like the slow tone of a funeral bell, we 
hear the dread sentence to the mirk midnight without, 
where are tears undried and passion unavailing. The 
most loving lips that ever spoke have, in love, shaped 
this form of words, so heart touching in their wailing 
but decisive proclamation of blackness, homelessness, 
and sorrow, and cannot but toll them over and over 
again into our ears, in sad knowledge of our forget- 
fulness and unbelief." 

(4) That it involves no useless or arbitrary suffering. — 
Of this we are confident, not because we know the 
precise character of the evil which will overtake the 
ungodly hereafter, but because the Lord of all the 
earth will do right. The evil which is to come upon 



166 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

the ungodly in their final state is portrayed by the 
sacred writers in figurative speech, suggesting for the 
most part physical suffering, like that which men 
experience in this life. " The worm that never dies," 
" the outside darkness," " the lake of fire," the com- 
panionship of bad men and demons, are all, except 
the last, figurative expressions, intended to fix in the 
mind an apprehension of great suffering. But we 
have no reason to interpret them as revealing the 
nature of that suffering. The reaction of reason and 
conscience against self-will may have a large place in 
the penalty of sin. Self-condemnation, self-reproach, 
and self-contempt are sure to be ministers of God's 
displeasure with those who will not obey the truth. 
Despair of future good must also mingle with the 
memory of slighted opportunity, and fill the soul with 
gloom. Remorse is certain to do its work with dread- 
ful constancy. Thus God's servants are placed in the 
constitution of man's spirit, and that spirit will there- 
fore scourge itself for persisting in sin. Every thing 
may come to pass through the energies of life itself. 
Of course, the environment may be concerned in moral 
retribution. The resurrection body of the wicked 
may enhance their misery. But it is not easy to con- 
ceive of any place where a lost soul would be at rest. 
Heaven would have no attractions for it. Darkness 
would be preferred to light, and separation from God, 
to fellowship with him. Yet out of God's presence it 
is impossible to flee. " If I ascend up into heaven, 
thou art there : If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 167 

thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; Even 
there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me. . . . Even the darkness hideth not from 
thee ; but the night shineth as the day : the darkness 
and the light are both alike to thee " (Ps. 139 : 8 f.). 

CONCLUSION. 

As a final thought in Eschatology, reference may be 
made to the vast preponderance of good over evil as 
the fruit of redemption and judgment. Not only will 
order be restored throughout the universe, but the 
good will far outnumber the bad ; the saved will be 
many times more than the lost. Not that Jesus, or 
any one of his disciples, has asserted this in so many 
words. The proportion of the lost to the saved is 
nowhere revealed in definite language. It looks, 
indeed, as if the Redeemer considered it unwise to 
satisfy human curiosity on this point. If we study 
his words closely they will be found to stop far short 
of fixing any definite ratio between the two classes. 

In his Sermon on the Mount it is said : " Enter ye 
in by the narrow gate : for wide is the gate, and broad 
is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be 
they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, 
and straitened is the way, that leadeth unto life, and 
few be they that find it." (Matt. 7 : 13, 14.) But 
this saying seems to have been intended to describe the 
conduct of men then living, rather than to foreshadow 
the two opposite currents of human life to the end 



168 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

of time. Again, Jesus is reported by Luke as saying, 
in answer to the question, "Lord, are there few that 
be saved?" "Strive to enter in by the narrow door: 
for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and 
shall not be able" (Luke 13: 24). But there is 
nothing in this to indicate the proportion of those 
who enter in to those who fail of entering. Indeed, 
the precise question is not answered, but is made the 
occasion for a serious exhortation and warning. In 
the parable of the ten virgins who went out to meet 
the bridegroom, five are described as wise and five as 
foolish ; but the parable appears to lay no stress upon 
the equal number of the two classes, and it would, 
doubtless, be fanciful to insist upon it as significant. 
In the parable of the wheat and tares, we may reason- 
ably presume that the wheat should be regarded as 
much more abundant than the tares, for this would 
generally be the case in Jewish farming; but there is 
no explicit reference to it in the words of Jesus, and 
we cannot rely upon it as a just inference. It is only a 
conjecture, after all. In the twin parables of the talents 
and the pounds, the proportion of the faithful to the 
unfaithful is as two to one; yet in neither parable is 
any use made of this circumstance. Besides, it is by 
no means certain that "the servants" signify all man- 
kind, from the beginning of human history to its end. 
And, lastly, in the parable of the wedding feast, only 
one of the guests is represented as not having a wed- 
ding garment, though the house was filled. But noth- 
ing is said to show that the ratio of the many to the 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 1G9 

one will be realized at the judgment day. Explicit 
teaching on this point there is none from the lips of 
Jesus. 

Nor is there anything like a numerical comparison 
between the saved and the lost in the apostolic writ- 
ings. But there are a few general expressions which 
foretell a magnificent outcome from Christ's media- 
torial work. It is impossible to read them without 
prejudice, and still believe that more than a small 
proportion of men and angels will be cast out into 
the outer darkness. Yet, as we have before seen, 
they are not to be interpreted as predicting the ulti- 
mate recoverv of all moral beings from sin to holi- 
ness. In one of them, God is said to have purposed 
" to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the 
heavens, and the things upon the earth " (Eph. 1 : 
10) ; in another, it is said that he " put all things in 
subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head 
over all things to the church, which is his body, the 
fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1 : 22, 
23); in another, that "it was the good pleasure (of the 
Father) that in him should all the fulness dwell ; 
and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, 
having made peace through the blood of his cross ; 
through him, whether things upon the earth, or 
things in the heaven" (Col. 1 : 19) ; and in another, that 
"he must reign till he hath put all his enemies under 
his feet ; the last enemy that shall be abolished is death. 
. . . And when all things have been subjected unto 
him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to 



170 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

him that did subject all things unto him, that God 
may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15: 25, 26,28). "Then/' 
says Dr. Kendrick, " shall be no more curse. Sickness 
and death, physical, mental, social, moral evil, all 
banished utterly and forever from that kingdom which 
— stretching over our entire earth, and including we 
know not how many sister spheres — shall have suc- 
ceeded to the imperfect and perishable monarchies of 
time! Then shall be nothing to vex or destroy in all 
God's holy mountain ; no more sorrow, no more suf- 
fering, no more error, no more death, because no 
more sin ! Somewhere within the creation of God, 
we are bound to believe, will be the prison-house of 
apostate angels, and of impenitent and unredeemed 
men, where sin that now riots in exulting license, shall 
writhe in darkness and bondage. But within the 
wide boundaries of the visible, organized, and ever- 
iucreasingly glorious kingdom of Christ, shall be no 
defilement and no sorrow."* Were the world of the 
lost to be at all comparable in numbers or strength to 
the world of the saved, it would be difficult to under- 
stand how Paul could have written the passages 
quoted, and especially difficult to see how he could 
have predicted that God should be " all in all." 

Moreover, though the sacred writers say nothing 
in respect to the future condition of those who die in 
infancy, one can scarcely err in deriving from this 
silence a favorable conclusion. That no prophet or 
apostle, that no devout father or mother, should have 
* Baptist Quarterly, vol. IV. (1870), p. 12. 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 171 

expressed any solicitude as to those who die before 
they are able to discern good from evil, is exceedingly 
surprising, unless such solicitude was prevented by 
the Spirit of God. There are no instances of prayer 
for children taken away in infancy. The Saviour 
nowhere teaches that they are in danger of being lost. 
"We therefore heartily and confidently believe that 
they are redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanc- 
tified by his Spirit, so that when they enter the unseen 
world they will be found with the saints. Thus 
almost half of the human race are rescued from the 
ruin of the fall by the Saviour's grace. And to these 
must naturally be added all others who have been in- 
capable of moral action in this life. As to religion, 
the idiot has no knowledge and no accountabilitv 
more than the infant. * 

Nor is this all. There are several prophecies of 
the Old Testament, which depict the Messiah's reign 
among men as peaceful, universal, and enduring (e. g., 
Ps. 72; Isa. 9: 6,7; 11: 1-9). And there is at 
least one prophecy of the New Testament which may 
fairly be classed with those referred to in the Old — 
namely, the paragraph in the twentieth chapter of 
Revelation concerning the Millennium. For that 
blessed period, whether it is to be preceded or to be 
followed by the second coming of Christ, is undoubt- 
edly described as a very long period ; and during the 
whole of it the controlling influence will be positively 

*See Bib. Sac. for 1861, p. 383 f., where a singular interpreta- 
tion, having no solid foundation, is given. 



172 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

Christian. The saints will inherit the earth. The 
powers of evil will be restrained. Rulers and people 
will unite in doing the wall of God. Kings will be 
nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers unto the 
true Israel. And when the duration and the charac- 
ter of this magnificent period are borne in mind, it 
will seem no exaggeration to say that the faithful on 
earth will become like the sands upon the seashore — 
innumerable. Long before this, John saw, in holy 
vision, U A great multitude, w T hich no man could 
number, out of every nation, and of (all) tribes and 
peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and 
before the Lamb, arrayed in wdiite robes, and palms 
in their hands; and they cry with a great voice, say- 
ing, Salvation unto our God which sitteth on the 
throne, and unto the Lamb" (Rev. 7 : 11, 12). 

Thus, without attempting to show that the sacrifice 
of Christ may inure to the everlasting benefit of some 
in Pagan lands who have never heard his name, it is 
easy to believe that good will at last greatly prepon- 
derate over evil, and the number of the saved be many 
times greater than the number of the lost. But we 
have no right to deny that the sacrifice of Christ will 
avail for the salvation of jnany who do not know him 
as Jesus of Nazareth. The words of Peter to Corne- 
lius, " Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter 
of persons ; but in every nation, he that feareth him 
and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him" (Acts 
10 : 34, 35), suggest a very different conclusion. Wher- 
ever the essentials of the Christian spirit are found 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 173 

there must be a person saved by grace. Read the list 
of ancient worthies in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. 
How many of them knew anything of Jesus Christ, 
as he lived and died in Palestine ? It is absurd to 
call in question the new birth of such men as are 
named in that list, and equally absurd to assume that 
the Holy Spirit revealed to them the historic Jesus, in 
order thereby to renew their hearts. But if Abraham 
and Melchisedek, if Joseph and Moses, if Rahab and 
Cornelius, if a great number of the chosen people in 
every age may have been penitent for sin and accepted 
by the Father of Mercies, through the atonement yet 
to be made, or an atonement already made without 
their knowledge, surely no one can deny the possi- 
bility of salvation to the heathen who know not the 
name of Jesus. Of course, no one is able to say how 
many of this class there have been among the heathen 
since the world began, or how many there may yet be 
before the end comes ; but, whether few or many, all 
who are so renewed in the temper of their minds that 
they will recognize Christ, whenever he is made known 
to them, as fulfilling all their desire and hope, will be 
numbered at the last great day with the redeemed. 

In this view I find myself supported by earnest and 
thoughtful writers. Thus Dr. A. C. Kendrick re- 
marks : " We may not know who or how many from 
the Gentile world have been saved without the procla- 
mation of the gospel, but we hazard nothing in saying 
that whoever have, have been saved through the inter- 
cession of Christ, and so saved that their first glimpse 



174 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 

of him and his redemption, whenever obtained, was 
welcomed by them as precisely adapted to their spirit- 
ual needs, as ' all their salvation and all their desire/ " 

"Christ," says Dr. Strong, "is the Word of God 
and the Truth of God ; he may therefore be received 
even by those who have not heard of his manifestation 
in the flesh; we may hope that 'many shall come 
from the east and the west, and shall sit down with 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of 
heaven/ A penitent and humble reliance upon God 
as a Saviour from sin and a guide of conduct, is an 
implicit faith in Christ; for such reliance casts itself 
upon God so far as God has revealed himself, and the 
only revealer of God is Christ " (Philosophy and Ee- 
ligion, p. 177). 

"The whole of Dr. Farrar's declamation against 
the belief that the eternal condition of the soul, as 
saved or lost, is fixed at death, rests on his own as- 
sumption that he knows that the vast majority die in 
a state shutting out the grace of God " (Dr. Pusey). 
Again, " The merits of Jesus reach to every soul who 
wills to be saved, whether in this life they knew him 
or knew him not ... We know absolutely nothing 
of the proportion of the saved to the lost, or who w r ill 
be lost ; but this we do know, that none will be lost 
who do not obstinately to the end, and in the end, 
refuse God " (What is of Faith as to Everlasting Pun- 
ishment? pp. 17, 23). Says Dr. Shedd : "It does 
not follow, however, that because God is not obliged 
to offer pardon to the unevangelized heathen, either 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 175 

here or hereafter, therefore no unevangelized heathen 
are pardoned. The electing mercy of God reaches to 
the heathen . . . That some unevangelized men are 
saved in. the present life by an extraordinary exercise 
of redeeming grace in Christ has been the hope and 
belief of Christendom . . . 'The habit of faith [ 
involves penitence for sin, and the longing for its 
forgiveness and removal. ' The habit of faith ? is 
the broken and contrite heart, which expresses itself 
in the prayer, Q God be merciful to me a sinner/ It 
is certain that the Holy Ghost can produce, if he 
please, such a disposition and frame of mind in a 
Pagan without employing, as he commonly does, the 
written word " (Doctrine of Endless Punishment, pp. 
109, 110). 

" We have reason to believe," remarks Dr. Chas. 
Hodge, "that the number of the finally lost in compar- 
ison with the whole number of the saved, will be very 
inconsiderable. Our blessed Lord, when surrounded 
by the innumerable company of the redeemed, will be 
hailed as the 'Salvator Hominum/ the Saviour of 
Men, as the Lamb that bore the sins of the world " 
(Syst. Theology, III., p. 880). 

These citations have been' made, not because the 
writer is in doubt as to the correctness of his position, 
but for the gratification of readers who may know the 
distinguished men whose words are given, and may 
be glad of this assurance that the preponderance of 
good over evil in the moral government of God is 
not the hopeful opinion of a single student, but the 



176 BIBLICAL E8CHATOLOGY. 

common judgment of able divines. For himself, he 
is able to believe, amid all the darkness that broods 
over the world, that God is love as well as light, and 
that in the blended glory of his light and love we 
shall see at last and forever the perfection of his ways : 
"'Now we see in a mirror darkly; but then face to 
face : now we know in part, but then shall we know 
even as also we have been known." (1 Cor. 13 : 9, 12.) 
Then, and not before, will our theodicy be made per- 
fect. Meantime, guided by the starlight of prophecy, 
we may journey onward in hope through the dim 
present into the luminous future — " while we look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen : for the things which are seen are tem- 
poral ; but the things which are not seen are eternal " 
(2 Cor 4 , 4 : 18). Under the holy influence of what we 
can thus discover, let us give earnest heed to the 
admonition : " To-day, if ye shall hear his voice, 
harden not your hearts " (Heb. 4 : 7). 



APPENDIX 



Since offering the manuscript of this volume to the Society 
for publication, it has been kindly read by a friend and fellow 
student of the word, who proposes a number of queries, which are 
worthy of a place in the work. Their pertinence will be obvious 
to every reader, and the remarks which accompany them will 
show the present writer's estimate of their value. 

" Query 1st. Could not the argument on pages 23-27 be put much 
more strongly ? You may not agree with me that the resurrection is 
the central fact (not truth) of Christianity ; but certainly the one 
subject of the apostolic preaching is a risen and living Saviour, 
and Paul expressly declares that if Christ be not risen, there is 
no Christianity and no salvation." 

This is all true, and perhaps it would have been well to empha- 
size the fact of the resurrection more strongly in the text. But to 
the writer's mind the evidence alleged seems to be absolutely con- 
clusive. To have added further proof would have been to him, 
when he was writing, a work of supererogation. Indeed, he has 
been for years unable to understand how any one can accept the 
Christian religion as true, and yet feel in doubt as to the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ from the dead, or how any one can give the 
slightest credit to Paul as a teacher of Christian truth, and yet 
distrust his prophecies of a resurrection of all those who fall 
asleep in Jesus, or how any one can believe in the inspiration of 
John and Luke, while he denies the resurrection of the wicked. 
The New Testament is pervaded with the doctrine of the resur- 
rection. History, prophecy, exhortation, and doctrine are instinct 
with it, and the writer desires to be understood to assert it as 
strongly as possible. 

"Query 2d. The root idea of most of the heresy on the 
subject of the resurrection is the belief that the death of the 
body is not the result of sin; that it is in no sense a penalty, but 
is inevitable from the nature of our original constitution. Would 
it not be well to have a paragraph on that subject ? " 

Perhaps it would, though it was not convenient to prepare it 
after the manuscript had left the writer's hands. But it is cer- 
tainly his belief that men would not have suffered physical death 

M 177 



178 BIBLICAL ESOHATOLOGY. 

if they had persevered in obedience to the divine will. Their 
bodily nature would have been so changed in due time as to be 
incorruptible and glorious, adapted to the highest wants of their 
spiritual nature ; but this change would have been wrought with- 
out the separation of soul from body in death. This appears to 
be a just conclusion from the language of Scripture. Physical 
death is therefore a penal consequence of sin, and victory over it 
by a resurrection of the body is a part of the Saviour's redemp- 
tion work. 

"Query 3d. Is there not a distinction in the New Testa- 
ment between ' flesh and blood J and ' flesh and bones ' ? " (See 
p. 43.) 

The expression "flesh and blood" occurs in Matt. 16: 17; 
1 Cor. 15: 50; Gal. 1: 16; Eph. 6: 12; Heb. 2: 14, and the ex- 
pression " flesh and bones " in Luke 24 : 39, and perhaps in Eph. 
5 : 30. From the passages in which the former appears, it may 
be inferred that it signifies man, regarded as feeble and frail when 
compared with God or spiritual beings. Both words refer to the 
weaker and more variable parts of the body. And as the blood is 
conceived of as the vehicle of animal life, and the flesh is associ- 
ated closely with the fact of sin, they naturally, when conjoined, 
point to corruption and death. On the other hand, bones are the 
stable framework of the body, though they must be clothed with 
flesh in order to reveal the full human form. It is also worthy 
of remark that neither of the two passages in which the expres- 
sion "flesh and bones" occurs contains any hint of weakness or 
frailty. Hence it may be said that the phraseology of Christ 
expresses a different thought from that expressed by the words of 
Paul, and justifies the explanation given on page 43. 

" Query 4th. Do you not weaken your argument by the dis- 
cussion of the comparative number of the saved and lost? If I 
am contending that the State has no right to take life, I am not 
convinced of the propriety of capital punishment by the small 
proportion of men that are hung. One case involves every 
difficulty. The number of cases would concern the expediency of 
the infliction, but not the right. I have seen the unmistakably 
undesirable effects of this argument in discussions to which I have 
listened." 

The remarks on this point are, of course, to be taken in con- 
nection with what had been previously said on the perfect right- 
eousness of the last judgment. They are not made for the 
purpose of showing that God has a "right" to punish a small 
fraction of mankind for their sins, when it would be wrong for 
him to punish a larger part of the race for the same conduct. 
But they are meant to show that God may be kind as well as 
true, wise as well as pure, gracious as well as just ; that we have 
no reason to decry his moral government as a failure, even so far 



BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. 179 

as the happiness of his creatures is concerned ; that, in spite of 
the great misery of those who refuse his love, the general outcome 
of creation and redemption may be, and probably will be, an 
amount of spiritual blessedness in the universe which will con- 
strain every rational soul to adore him as " the only wise God." 
Yet the subject is perhaps too high for profitable discussion, and 
the line of thought expressed in the last paragraphs of this book 
may be less wholesome than was supposed. But if what is there 
said be substantially correct, it certainly should be helpful to 
certain troubled hearts. 

" Query 5th. If our Lord's statement that the way to life is 
narrow, and few find it, is applicable simply to an undermined 
number of years, how can I tell what announcements of his are 
temporary and what permanent? I am so constantly told that 
the statements of Christ with regard to the necessity of regenera- 
tion to man's native character, etc., were true when he uttered 
them, but are noi now true, that I have constantly to ask what 
there is in the New Testament that we can be sure is not outgrown. 
I hope you will guard this, for it is one of the most plausible ways 
in which all the vital truths of Christianity are denied. There is 
scarcely a statement or a command which relates to man the 
application of which to this age is not denied." 

This query merits the gravest consideration. For the difficulty 
of distinguishing between statements, if such there be, which were 
applicable only to the persons first addressed, and statements 
which are applicable to all men in all times, cannot be questioned. 
Nor can it be doubted that many persons parry the force of almost 
eVery doctrine or precept of the New Testament, by representing 
it to their own minds as merely provisional, adapted to the first 
age of Christianity, but not to the present. Yet the difficulty and 
danger cannot be removed by denying the influence of our 
Saviour's historical environment upon the form of his teaching. 
His words seem to have been specially addressed to the moral - 
condition of his hearers. Those hearers were Jews, and the Jews 
of that period were a singular people. More enlightened as to the 
true God than surrounding nations, they were nevertheless more 
resolute and bitter in their rejection of Christ. They were proud, 
sanctimonious, and self-righteous to a remarkable degree. And 
Jesus Christ, as a wise and faithful teacher, spoke to them in 
words that were marvelously fitted to their religious state If, then, 
we find in studying the words of Christ or of his apostles that 
some of them had respect to particular features of Jewish charac- 
ter or conduct, we must certainly take account of this fact. Or if 
we find that other words had respect to certain sins and vices 
prevalent among the Gentiles, we must recognize this special 
reference, and interpret them accordingly. It would be an error 
to apply without qualification our Saviour's language in denounc- 



180 BIBLICAL ESCHATOLOGY. * 

ing the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23) to all the Jews and 
Gentiles of that day, and no less an error to apply without modi- 
fication the description which Paul gives of current heathen vices 
(Kom. 1 : 24-32) to the Jews of his own day, or to Christian com- 
munities of any age. 

Hence the principle on which the words of Christ in regard to 
the narrow way, found by few, may be supposed to refer to that 
age, and to give no instruction as to much later ages, cannot be 
wholly rejected. But it is one that should be used with extreme 
caution. For there are no writings to be compared with those of 
the New Testament in their grasp of universal facts and tenden- 
cies. There is no teaching on record which approaches that of 
Jesus in its power to reveal to men their inmost life — the secrets 
of their heart. And this establishes a presumption that his words 
in a particular case are applicable to mankind ; that every precept 
or command which he uttered is of eternal validity; that he saw 
clearly the very heart of things, and spoke what will be true to 
the end of time. A reluctance to admit this, a desire to cast off 
as far as possible the yoke of Christ, is almost certain to lead one 
astray in the interpretation of his words. Thus God is testing us, 
proving us, by the way in which truth is offered to us in the 
Scriptures. Only the candid and patient seeker after this treasure 
will find it either in the Word of God, or in the book of nature. 
And possibly the best rule for interpreting the New Testament 
would be to regard all its teaching as applicable to us, no less truly 
or fully than to those first addressed, unless there is something in 
the passage interpreted, or in some other statement of the record, 
which requires us to time its application to a particular age or 
class. But the subject is one that deserves a far more thorough 
treatment than can be given it here. Many would be exceedingly 
thankful to the author of these queries if he would publish a work 
on this question. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND WRITERS QUOTED. 



PAGE 

Adam, idea of death ascribed to, conjectural 91 

jEon (or age), this and the coming one 120/ 

All the nations {jTavra ra e$vr)) f all mankind (Matt. 25 : 31) .... 149 

All things (ra ndvTa^ explanation of (in Col. 1 : 20) 116/ 

•AvoAv'w, avaXvais, descriptive of death(Phil. 1 : 23 ; 2 Tim. 4 : 6) 18/ 

Angels, evil, to be judged at the last day 150/ 

Articles, on " Preaching to the spirits in prison," referred to 107 

Augustine, on the nature of " spiritual " bodies 38 

" on the blessedness of heaven 157 

Bible, only source of knowledge in eschatology 11 

Blessedness of heaven progressive forever 158/ 

" u " increased by fidelity here 158 

Bliss [Gr. R.), on the judicial function of saints at the last day 147 

Body, natural, but a part of man 13/ 

" " its death destroys not the soul 14 

" spiritual, given to the saints at the resurrection 14/ 

" the substance of, unnamed 38/ 

" " of Christ did not need food 44/ 

u " functions of. 38/ 

Boise (J. R.), on the meaning of "reconcile" (Col. 1 : 20)... 118/ 

Brain, present relation to consciousness 19/ 

" this vital relation not known to be necessary to men- 
tal action : 19/ 

Briggs (C. A.), on the relation of a posthumous life to a res- 
urrection t 49/ 

Bunyan (J.), on the effect of the last judgment upon the 

minds of sinners 154 

Buttmann (A.), on the use of the Greek article with a parti- 
ciple in a clause virtually relative 100 

181 



182 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Care for the body a great blessing to sinful men under pro- 
bation 139/ 

Carpenter (W. B.), on the meaning of Rev. 20: 4-6 69 

Christ, body of, spiritual during " the forty days " 40/ 

" confutes the Sadducees as to the resurrection 24/ 

" does not reveal the time of the resurrection 47/ 

" estimate of the Old Testament by 124 

" preached through his Spirit in Noah to " the spirits 

in prison" 99/ 

" theories as to the time of the second advent of. 65/ 

" will raise the dead at last 34 

" will judge mankind at the last day 146/ 

Conant (T. J.), on the meaning of Job. 19 : 25-27 50 

Consciousness, of human souls after death . 79/ 

" objections to consciousness after death an- 
swered 90/ 

Cook (F. C), on " the gospel was preached to the dead," etc. 109/ 

Dante, representation of heaven by 159 

Day, the last, probably denotes an indefinite period 148 

" " " the time of Christ's return to judge the world 65/ 

Death, natural, three Biblical uses of the term 13/ 

" " Adam's conception of, unknown 91 

" " compared with sleep, etc 91/ 

" " Biblical language concerning its effect 92/ 

" second, is it a literal or a figurative use of the 

word? 66/, 68/ 

" signification of the word various, as in case of life 90/ 

" and the last judgment associated 134/ 

" and life, various meanings of. 90/ 

Decease (^ofios), use of in Luke 9 : 31 ; 2 Pet. 1 ; 15, 16, ex- 
plained 18/ 

Demerit of sin, known only to God 163/ 

Depart (ivoAOo-at), use of in Phil. 1 : 23, and 2 Tim. 4: 6 17/ 

Domestic affections and duties as related to the probation of 

sinners here 140 

Dwight (T.), on the meaning of aiuvlos, eternal 161/ 



INDEX. 183 

PAGE 

Eadie (J.), on "the lower parts of the earth." (Eph. 4: 9.) 113 
Ellicott (C. J.), on the distinction between a " spiritual " and 

a "psychical" body 38 

" " on the view that Paul expected to survive 

the second advent of Christ 57/ 

Equitableness of the last judgment 154/ 

Eschatology, reasons for human interest in 11 

H source of knowledge respecting 11 

topics embraced in this subject 11/ 

Esdras (2d), on the fact of a resurrection of the dead 33 

Evans (Canon), on the nature of a spiritual body 38/ 

Family relations not restored by the resurrection 33/ 

Fiske (J.), cerebral physiology and consciousness after death, 21/ 

Germination, improper use of Paul's analogy from 63/ 

God always weighing the actions of men 145 

Godet (F.), on Christ's coming to every believer at death.... 71/ 
Gospel, the, was preached to those who are dead. (1 Pet. 

4: 6.) 97/ 

Green (S. G.), on the omission of the article before an-eiSijowt 99 
Green (T. S.), on the omission of the article before aTret^o-ao-t 

(IPet. 3: 19.) 99 

Hades, Note on the deri v ation and meani ng of 82 

" Condition of the unrighteous in, fixed, penal 125 

Heathen, to be judged according to their opportunities 132/ 

" possibility of the salvation of some. 174/ 

Hodge (C), proportion of the saved to the lost 175 

Humane, patriotic, and social activity favorable to probation 

in the case of sinners 140/ 

Idiots, and those who die in infancy, saved through Christ... 143/ 

Josephus, on the doctrine of Jewish sects as to the resurrec- 
tion 32/ 

Judgment, the last, for what purpose held 145 

" " " presided over by Christ 146/ 

" " " all men and evil angels judged 148/ 

" " " perfectly righteous , 151/ 



184 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Kellogg (S. H.), Article on Premillennialism by, characterized, 77 

Kendricky (A. C), interpretation of Rev. 20: 4-6, by 68 

" " on " Preaching to the spirits in prison "... 107 
" " on the effect of the omission of the article 

before awe^rjaaaL 100/ 

Labor y on the benefit of, in a state of probation for sinners... 139/ 

Lazarus, condition of, in Abraham's bosom 82/ 

Life (zo>ij), high sense of the word in many passages..... 34 

" continuance of, after death, a pledge of resurrection 26, 49 

" eternal, what it may be . , 157/ 

" (^xv)j is sometimes merely animal life 16/ 

" " has two senses in certain passages 17 

Lightfoot (J. B.), on "reconcile" (Col. 1: 20), and "sum 

up" (Eph. 1: 10) 115/ 

Lyman (A. J.), on "the dogma of probation after death 

untenable and illiberal " 138 

Maccabees (2d), on a resurrection of the dead 33 

Macdonalcl (G-.), on the benefit of labor 139/ 

Martyrdomy not the greatest of evils 14/ 

" probably anticipated by Peter 112/ 

Mason (A. J.) on "The gospel was preached to the dead," etc. 108/ 

Materialismy not taught by the words, "Dust thou art," etc. 15/ 
McLaren (A.), Coming of Christ at death and at his second 

advent 71 

Meaning of <W>^? and of <f>avep6(a when predicated of the risen 

Christ 41 

Millennium, two theories concerning the time of the 65/ 

" supposed to be preceded bv the Second Advent... 66/ 

" supposed to be followed by the Second Advent... 73/ 

Milton (J), on the blessedness of heaven 160 

Misery, eternal, presupposes eternal sin 163/ 

" of the wicked proportioned hereafter to their guilt... 164/ 

" of the lost, in large measure self-inflicted 166/ 

Moses and Elijah, appearance of, on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration 90 



INDEX. 185 

PAGE 

Noah, a herald («iw>vf) of righteousness 102 

Note, textual, on "died" instead of "suffered," (1 Pet. 

3: 18.) „ 14 

" on the canonical authority of the Second Epistle of 

Peter 82 

" on the meaning of hades 82 

* on Oertel's explanation of "for" in IPet. 4: 6 110 

Number of the saved compared with that of the lost 

nowhere indicated 167/ 

Oertel (J. K.), on the design of God in the preaching of the 

gospel to the dead. (1 Pet. 4: 6.) 110 

Old Testament predictions concerning the Messiah's reign... 171/ 
Oxygen, used as an illustration of the soul in different con- 
ditions. 21 

Parables, characteristics of Christ's 83 

Paul, did not expect to live till Christ's second advent 57/ 

" did not connect resurrection with death, but with 

Christ's second coming 60/ 

" on the fact of a resurrection of the dead 26/ 

"' on the nature of resurrection bodies , 35/ 

u on the time when the dead will be raised 55/ 

" wished to be with Christ by death in preference to 

living in the flesh , 86/ 

Peabody (A. P.), assumes a probation of the unprivileged 

after death 95/ 

Pepper (G. D. B.), on the meaning of Kev. 20: 4-9 68 

Peter, on Christ's preaching to the spirits in prison 97/ 

" on the gospel preached to the dead 107/ 

" was expecting to suffer martyrdom 112/ 

Premillennialists, piety and scholarship of, recognized, but 

their interpretations rejected 77 

Probation, after death not established by Scripture 95/ 

" limited, according to Scripture, to this life 121/ 

" reasons for thinking this life favorable to 139/ 

Progressive Orthodoxy, quotations from 135/ 

criticisms of. 137/ 



186 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Psyche fax*)), often synonymous with " spirit " 14 

" sometimes equivalent to animal life 16 

Psychical, from psyche — suited and subjected to animal life.. 38/ 

Pusey (E. B.), on the conditions of salvation for the heathen 174 

Quotation, from the Dies Iroz 154 

" from the "City of God," (Augustine) 157 

" Sonnet on Time (Milton) 160 

" The Paradise (Dante) 159 

Reconcile, meaning of in Col. 1: 20 116/ 

Remorse and despair, fruits of sin unforgiven 164/ 

Resurrection from the dead, an expression wrongly supposed 

to favor the premillennial theory 69/ 

Resurrection of the dead, fact of asserted 23/ 

words used to express the fact. 29/ 

qualities of bodies received by saints at 31/ 

time when it takes place 47/ 

no proof that it occurs at death 47/ 

premillennial theory of the time examined.-. 66/ 
post millennial theory of the time approved.. 72/ 
at the last day, for the last judgment.... 54/, 60, 134 

Sadducees, Christ's answer to, suggests nature of resurrection 

bodies, but fixes no time for resurrection 50 

Saints associated with Christ in j udgment 146/ 

Second Advent, always imminent, or not? 70/ . 

" description of. < 74/ 

" creeds of Christendom as to 77 

Shedd (W. G. T.), on the range of possible salvation 174/ 

Sin, against the Holy Spirit, never to be forgiven 119/ 

Sleep, figuratively used of death, does not imply extinction 

of conscious being... 91/ 

Soul faxv), existence of, out of the body denied 19 

" not disproved 19/ 

Spirit (irvtvfjLa), the resurrection body adapted to the 38/ 

Spirits of the just made perfect, conscious 89 



INDEX. 187 

PAGE 

Strong (A. H.), on the salvation of some that knew not 

Christ 174 

Suffering of the unrighteous in hades 127/, 132/ 

Surprise of believers and unbelievers at the last day 94/ 

Truth preached by human lips more effective than when 

presented in any other way 141/ 

Unconsciousness of the dead, apparently but not really taught 

in a few passages 92/ 

Universalis™, Biblical grounds for, examined 114/ 

Vision of God, the, hereafter, incomprehensible now 159/ 

Warren (I. P.). holds that pre-Christian saints had their res- 
urrection completed about A. D. 70 51 

* " on Christ's words in John 5: 28, 29 51 

" " on Paul's expectation of living till Christ's 

advent 57 

" " on Paul's analogy of a germinating seed 63 

Weiss (B.), theory of, concerning the substance of spiritual 

bodies 39/ 

on "the lower parts of the earth" 113 

on " this age and that which is to come" 119/ 

Westcott (B. F.), on the nature of Christ's body during " the 

forty days" 45 

Waterland (D.), on Christ's reply to the Sadducees 80/ 

Withington (L.), on the supreme folly of Satan; 95 






INDEX OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES. 



PAGE 

Gen. 1: 26,27 15 

" 2: 7 15, 17 

" 3: 19 15 

" 15: 12 92 

" 28: 12-26.. 92 

Num. 24: 4 92 

ISam. 2: 3 145 

" 28: 11-19 90 

Job 4: 13/ 92 

" 19: 25-27 50 

Ps. 6: 6 92 

" 30: 10 92 

" 49: 15 50 

" 68: 18 113 

" 72: passim... 171 

" 73: 24, 25 50 

" 88: 3-7, 10-12, 15-17..92, 93 

" 139: 8/.... 167 

" 146: 4 92 

Prov. 23: 14 50 

Eccl. 9: 10 92 

" 11: 9 151 

" 12: 7 17,49,79 

" 12: 14 93, 151 

Isa. 9: 6, 1 171 

" 11: 1-9 171 

" 26: 19/. 50 

" 28: 17 145 

" 38: 18,19 .-„ 92 

188 



PAGE 

Isa. 44: 23 113 

" 45: 23, 24 114 

Ezek. 3: 18-21 134 

" 37: 1-14, 15-28 50 

Dan. 10: 6-9 92 

" 12: 3 50, 158 

Matt. 2: 20 16 

" 5: 17 124 

" 7: 13, 14 167 

" 7: 22, 23 93, 95, 128 

" 7: 22 153 

" 8: 11 86 

" 8: 27 104 

" 8: 29 150 

" 9: 35 104 

" 10: 15 124 

" 10: 28 14,89 

" 10: 40 „ - 102 

16 10: 32,33 129 

" 10: 39 53 

" 11: 23 82 

" 11: 21-24 124, 164 

" 12: 31,32 119 

" 12: 36,37 148 

" 13 : 25-30, 39-43, 31, 

32,33 72, 151 

" 13: 40-43,48,50, 39, 

49 74, 134 

" 17: 3,4 90 



INDEX. 



189 



PAGE 

Matt. 17: 11 115, 118 

" 16: 18 82 

" 16: 27 70, 151 

" 19: 28 73 

" 21: 10 104 

" 22: 32 80 

" 22: 23-33.. 47 

" 23: 22..,. 105 

" 24: 31 151 

" 24: 37-39 70, 124 

" 24: 44 70 

" 25: 14-30, 31-46 74 

" 25: 26-30 136 

" 25: 31-46 passim 93 

95, 129, 131, 146, 148 
152, 153 

" 26: 8... 104 

" 26: 64 72 

" 27: 50 49 

" 27: 53 30 

" 28: 20 71 

Mark 3: 4 16 

" 3: 29 , 120 

" 9: 47, 48 161 

" 12: 18-27 47,48 

" 13: 32 71 

" 15: 37 49 

" 16: 14 41 

Luke 6: 9 16 

" 9: 31 18 

" 10: 12, 14 124 

■ " 10: 15 82 

" 12: 4 13 

" 12: 47, 48. ...124, 152, 164 

" 13: 24 168 

" 14: 14 55 



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PAGE 

: 26 16 

: 10 133 

: 19-31 122 

: 23 82 

: 31 124 

: 26-29 124 

: 10 136 

: 12/. 73 

: 17-19 148 

: 13-25 152 

: 27-40 47 

: 34-36 31, 37 

: 38 80 

: 43 41 

: 42,43 84 

: 46..... 17,49, 84 

: 13, 31, 33/. 42 

: 34.... 41 

: 39 43 

: 43 44 

19, 21 49 

14-16 136 

36 b 162 

22,23,27, 29 146 

24*, 40 162 

28, 29 24, 34, 51, 55 

65,69,127, 131 

45-47... 124 

29 152 

33, 35, 53, 63 162 

39, 40, 54 51 

40, 44, 54 65, 76 

21-25 114, 134 

41 110 

: 17 85 

: 24, 25 52, 65 



190 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

John 11 : 39, 43, 44 49 

" 12: 25 16 

" 12: 31 150 

" 12: 24, 31, 32,33 72 

" 13: 37, 38... 16 

" 14: 2, 3 54,72,156 

" 15: 5 102 

" 15: 24 110 

" 17: 23 102 

" 17: 24 54 

" 19: 30 17, 49 

" 20: 14/, 19/, 26/. 42 

" 21: 1 41 

" 21: 4/ 42 

" 21: 19 112 

Actsl: 6,7 73 

" 2: 3 41 

" 2: 24/. 25,82 

" 2: 27, 31 82 

" 2: 30-36 73 

" 3: 15/. 25, 115, 118 

" 4: 10 25 

" 5: 29, 30.... 25 

" 7: 2,26,30,35 41 

" 7: 51, 52 102 

" 7: 59 17,49,85 

« 9: 17 41 

" 9: 37-40 49 

" 10: 34, 35 152,172 

" 10: 40... 25 

" 13: 31 41 

" 13: 32,33. 73 

" 15: 26 16 

" 16: 19 41 

" 17: 31 76, 146, 148 

" 17: 32 .. 69 



PAGE 

Acts 20: 24 16 

" 23: 6 69 

" 24: 14, 15 24 

" 24: 15, 21 69 

" 23: 8 33 

" 24: 25 142 

" 26: 16 41 

Eom. 1: 4 69, 73 

" 1: 18/. 125,126 

" 1: 28 133 

" 2: 5-16 133 

" 2: 6,7 151 

" 2: 7 156 

" 2: 12/... 76,125,152,161 

" 4: 20 97 

" 5: 17 148 

" 6: 14r-16 152 

" 8: 17 156 

" 8: 30 119 

" 11: 25 73 

" 13: 11, 12 70 

" 14: 9,12 114 

" 14: 10 148 

" 14: 12 151 

ICor. 3: 13 76 

" 4: 5 76, 151 

" 6: 2, 3 146, 150 

" 6: 14 27 

" 12: 12 102 

" 13: 9, 12 176 

" 13: 12 159 

" 15: 6, 7,8 41 

" 15 : 12, 13, 20, 23.. 26, 69 

" 15: 21,42 69 

" 15: 23,24 69 

11 15: 23,24,52 65 



INDEX. 



191 



PAGE 

1 Cor. 15: 24,25 73 

" 15: 24-26 76 

" 15: 24-28 115 

" 15: 25, 26, 28 170 

" 15: 35-39 35, 63 

" 15: 41,42,44 36 

" 15: 50 43 

" 15: 50,52,53 156 

" 15: 51,52 58, 70 

" 15: 55 82 

2 Cor. 4: 14 26 

" 5: 1-8 60 

• 5: 10 76,86,130,146 

11 12: 4 84 

Gal. 6: .7,8 131 

" 6: 7-9 151 

Eph. 1: 4 136 

" 1: 10 115, 169 

" 1: 22, 23 , 169 

" 1: 20-23 73 

" 2: 6 119 

" 4: 8,9 113 

Phil. 1: 21,22 17 

" 1: 23... 17 

" 1: 21-24 88/ 

" 2: 9-11 114 

" 2: 10 118 

" 2: 10, 11 150 

" 3: 10, 11 69 

" 3: 13,14 88 

" 3: 21 39, 160 

" 4: 1 158 

Col. 1: 19 169 

" 1: 19, 20 115 

" 3: 16 104 

1 Thess. 2: 19, 20 158 



PAGE 

1 Thess. 4: 14 26 

" 4: 13, 17 55, 69 

" 4: 15, 17 65, 70 

" 5: 1,2 70 

5: 2 76 

2 Thess. 1: 6-10 67,148 

" 1: 7-11 65,75 

" 2: 3-10 72 

ITim. 1: 13 110 

2 Tim. 1: 9 136 

" 2: 11, 12 157 

" 2: 12 '. 148 

" 3: 1-8,13 72 

" 4: 6 18 

Heb. 1: 3,4 73 

" 2: 5-10..... 115 

" 2: 8/. 118 

" 4: 7 176 

" 6 : 1,2 24 

" 9: 27 134, 148 149 

" 10: 29 164 

" 11: 7 102 

" 12: 23 49, 89 

James. 2: 26 15 

IPet. 1: 3 69 

" 1: 5 70' 

" 1: 11 98 

" 3: 6 104 

" 3: 14-18 14 

" 3: 17-19 97/ 

" 3: 19... 49, 81, 97, 123 

" 4: 6 97 

" 4: 12,13 112 

" 4: 19 86 

" 5: 12 104 

2 Pet. 1: 14 112 



192 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

2 Pet. 1: 15,16 18 

" 2: 4/. 81,102,125 

" 3: 8,9 70, 148 

" 3: 10-13.... 76,117, 119 

Uohn2: 20 118 

" 3: 16..... 16 

Jude6 150 

Kev. 1: 11 66 

" 1: 18 82 

" 2: 7 84 

" 2: 23 151 

" 3: 3 70 

" 4: 1-11 157 

" 4: 4 147 

" 5: 8-14 157 

" 5: 13 115, 118 

" 6: 8 82 

" 6: 9 49 

" 7: 11,12 172 



PAGE 

Kev. 7: 14 128 

" 8: 9 16 

" 14: 9/. 126 

" 16: 3 16 

" 16: 15 70 

" 19: 20 117, 126 

" 20: 4-6.66,68,69,76,148 

" 20: 7-9 67,68,134 

" 20: 10 117 

" 20: 13. 24, 69 

" 20: 11-15 74, 82, 93 

" .148,151 

" 21: 1 119 

" 21: 1,8 117 

" 21: 10-27 157 

" 22: 2 84 

" 22: 5 . 148 

" 22: 11 134 

" 22: 11,15.......... 161 







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